‘ The return of cold case detective, Karen Pirie’
– Silent Bones
[ About the Book ]
The truth is buried just beneath the surface . . .
When torrential rain causes a landslide on a motorway in Scotland, it reveals a crime scene: someone hid a body in the tarmac eleven years before. Journalist Sam Nimmo had been the prime suspect in the murder of his fiancée when he disappeared, and now DCI Karen Pirie and her Historic Cases Unit must find out who buried him, and why.
Meanwhile, in Edinburgh, new evidence reopens a closed case and the accidental death of a hotel manager starts to look like murder. But what did Tom Jamieson’s book club have to do with his demise – and what will they do to keep their secrets?
Karen and her team begin to untangle a web of lies, one that connects their murder cases with Scotland’s rich and powerful. They will be tested to their limits – and possibly beyond . . .
[ My Review ]
Silent Bones by Val McDermid published October 23rd with Sphere and is described ‘as her most gripping and fiendishly clever case yet’.
DCI Karen Pirie, head of Scotland’s Historic Cases Unit (HCU) is back for her eighth appearance. As someone who has not kept up with this series (I know…I know) I can honestly say that it made absolutely no difference to my enjoyment of this read. Sufficient references are made to Karen Pirie’s background providing a solid ground to grasp what’s happening in her life.
Spring 2025, and following particularly bad weather, a crime scene is revealed beneath the surface of a section of the M23 motorway. ‘Bad enough that it had completely blocked one lane, destroyed the hard shoulder and caused mayhem on the morning commute, but when the road crew had finally turned up, the traffic problem quickly morphed into a very different one.’ On the discovery of skeletal remains, DCI Pirie and her team are brought on board. Due to the condition of the body the immediate assessment is that it was buried during the construction phase of the motorway some years previously.
The team are soon embroiled in an additional case, when a man comes into the station with perceived evidence that his brother’s accidental death was in fact murder. These two parallel investigations require the team to look way outside the box at the possibility of something much bigger at play with some very powerful people involved. Karen Pirie never has an issue stepping on anyone’s toes but even she is has to accept that she is dealing with much higher stakes than ever before that could seriously backfire for her and her team.
DCI Karen Pirie has been toughened throughout her career by what she has witnessed but her frustration levels with the justice system and how it works are at an all time high as the team slowly unravel a dark truth that could have implications far and wide. Simultaneously, Karen is facing some life-changing decisions but she is not one to let her personal life get in the way of her work, so she chooses pragmaticism, getting on with the job on hand.
Silent Bones is a really interesting, and possibly divisive, novel highlighting the level of greed, deceit and ultimately power that exists in society. There have always been people who will do absolutely anything to achieve, what they perceive to be, success. Think Machiavelli as the perfect example!
Val McDermid is known as The Queen of Crime with an ability to draw the reader in to the plot and to journey with her characters on their road to salvation or redemption…or neither. The writing is smart with the pages almost turning by themselves. Karen Pirie is a tenacious individual, but not without empathy when required. She is extremely protective of her team and a great supporter of encouraging each of them to find their strengths, their niche, within the HCU.
Ethical dilemmas abound in Silent Bones as Karen Pirie and the HCU team become entangled in a web of deception, power and privilege, with a very controlled, yet complex, plot at the centre. An extremely compelling, and intelligent police procedural, Silent Bones is a stellar novel, as a standalone, or as part of this engaging series.
[ Thank you to Laura Sherlock and Little Brown Books for a copy of Silent Bones in exchange for my honest review ]
[ Bio ]
One of the UK’s most accomplished and respected novelists, Val McDermid has sold over 19 million books to date across the globe and her work has been translated into more than 40 languages. She has written five series: cold case detective Karen Pirie was introduced to us in The Distant Echo and the 8th book in the series will be published in 2025, with Karen now starring in a major ITV series; clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan lead a gripping eleven book series adapted for television as Wire in the Blood, starring Robson Green and Hermione Norris; the Kate Brannigan novels showcase a private detective; journalist Lindsay Gordon is at the heart of another series; and most recently, Val has launched a new series featuring young journalist Allie Burns whose life and experiences we witness at ten year intervals, debuting with 1979 1989.
Val has also published several award-winning standalone novels, books of non-fiction, short story collections and a children’s picture book, My Granny is a Pirate. Val returned to Karen Pirie with her 2023 hardback, Past Lying, which was published in October of that year. 2024 saw the publication of Queen Macbeth, her reimagining of the story of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, in May.
Her new Karen Pirie novel, Silent Bones, published in October 2025.
