Review: PAST LYING, Val McDermid

• 
  this edition published by Sphere 2023
  
• ISBN 978-1-4087-2908-3
• 452 pages
• #7 in the Karen Pirie series

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

Edinburgh, haunted by the ghosts of its many writers, is also the cold case beat of DCI Karen Pirie. So she shouldn't be surprised when an author's manuscript appears to be a blueprint for an actual crime.

Karen can't ignore the plot's chilling similarities to the unsolved case of an Edinburgh University student who vanished from her own doorstep. The manuscript seems to be the key to unlocking what happened to Lara Hardie, but there's a problem: the author died before he finished it.

As Karen digs deeper, she uncovers a spiralling game of betrayal and revenge, where lies are indistinguishable from the truth and with more than one unexpected twist . . .

The Queen of Crime Val McDermid is at the top of her game in her most gripping and fiendishly clever case yet.

My Take

I really should read more by Val McDermid. As you can see from my list below I always enjoy her books. I don't think I have read any others featuring DCI Karen Pirie. I usually favour reading a series in order to pick up on character development etc. But in this case I don't think it makes much difference. McDermid has done a lovely job of filling in the bits from the past that I needed to know. 

The novel is set in Edinburgh in April 2020, the beginning of the Covid lockdown with all sorts of regulations and restrictions that placed limitations on "normal" life including where we could go, what we could do etc. In fact, so well is this setting described in the novel, I had to remind myself as I set the novel down for a breather that we are not now in isolation.

The plot twists and turns as DCI Pirie and her team attempt to work out the correlations between the unexplained disappearance of student in Edinburgh a year before and a manuscript donated to the National Archives which seems to describe what happened to her. About half way through the novel, as my mind played with what DCI Pirie had uncovered so far, I came up with a "what if" which in fact was close to the final resolution. Now, it is not often that happens, but it didn't prevent me from reading the rest of the book, nor did it remove the pleasure of finding out that I was "nearly right".

Somebody wiser than me remarked a year or two ago that just as World War One, and World War Two, and the assassination of JFK, have provided time markers for us where we say pre-war or post-war, so Covid 19 will provide a similar time marker for us. I really haven't read too many books that have done that so far, but here is one that reminds of the impact Covid 19 had on our daily lives. Here in Australia variants of Covid are still having an impact. For example, there are still thousands in hospital. There are still people in our communities who disappear for a week or two with it. We are raising a whole generation of young people whose schooling has been disrupted by Covid. So much is different to what it was 4 years ago.

My rating: 4.8

I've also read

• BENEATH THE BLEEDING
• 4.8, THE SKELETON ROAD
• 4.8, OUT OF BOUNDS
• 4.7, 1979
• 4.8, INSIDIOUS INTENT