A Darker Domain

Detective Inspector Karen Pirie runs the Cold Case Review Team in Fife, in the east of Scotland. When a young woman walks in to report that her father went missing twenty-three years ago in 1984, Pirie begins to investigate. Mick Prentice, a miner, was last seen during a bitter miners' strike and it was commonly thought that he'd gone scabbing--but now it's clear that he did not. The Prentice investigation develops at a good pace for a case so cold. Then another case lands on Karen's desk from the same era: in 1985 a young woman and her infant son were kidnapped for ransom, and in the muddle of the ransom handover the woman was killed and the baby disappeared completely. Now a reporter vacationing in Tuscany has found something that brings the case back to life. This book works beautifully on many levels. The plot and characters are complex and gratifying. Author Val McDermid's return to the Scotland of her roots feels like a labor of love, and the landscape and history of Fife come to life in her words. Who wants the past revealed, and who wants to cover it up? What will a wealthy but bereft man do to find the grandson who, if he survived, is now a young man? What guilty secrets were played out at the intersection of these two cases, and what was the heavy cost? Will DI Pirie's methods yield the truth, and will it set anyone free? You may guess some of the answers but the moody story is guaranteed to satisfy. McDermid's leading women are always well-defined, a little gritty, a little tormented. In A Darker Domain: A Novel we find some fascinating men too, many with their own dark secrets and agendas. So many characters, some lightly sketched but still fascinating; in other words, a full backdrop to the story. The book moves back and forth in time and place, with stories from the past written in "real time" from the characters' point of view. While the constant switches can be distracting, they also give a much greater immediacy than if the story had been purely narrative from an omniscient author. McDermid takes firm control of the story and the tension is superb. In her hands the lessons of the past cast long shadows into the present. Linda Bulger, 2009

Two unrelated events in the present bring a kidnapping gone horrible wrong during the miner's strike in Scotland back in 1984, blasting out of the past with a vengeance that will shake up several lives. Over two decades ago Catriona Maclennan Grant and her infant son Adam were kidnapped. In the present Reporter Bel Richmond is on holiday in Tuscany, when she discovers evidence relating to that unsolved crime along with evidence of a recent murder in an abandoned villa. Back in the past Mick Prentice, a diehard union man, supposedly left his wife and child and went scabbing with five others and was never heard from again. In the present, his daughter has finally reported him missing, because her son needs a bone marrow transplant to save his life. DI Karen Pirie gets both cases, one officially and the other not so officially and as she investigates, she finds that they may be related and that events in the past may not have been what they seemed. Bel Richmond, who is running her own parallel investigation, is one step ahead of Karen and that step could prove to be more dangerous than she could ever imagine, because there are those in the present who will stop at nothing to keep the past dead and buried. This is a first rate mystery with real characters. Val McDermid takes her readers right into the heart of a police investigation, showing them how it's down in Scotland. She also paints a picture of jealousy and envy that must abound in police forces everywhere and shows us that wealth and power trump the average joe ninety-nine percent of the time. Still ninety-nine percent of the time isn't always. This is a riveting read. Reviewed by Vesta Irene

Michelle Prentice Gibson, called Misha walks into the police station in Fife, Scotland to report a missing person. The man at the desk thinks it's the usual, missing boyfriend or lover, but when Misha says she's reporting her missing father and that he'd vanished two dozen years ago, all of a sudden he's interested and he sends her up to the Cold Case team headed by Detective Inspecter Karen Pirie and seconded by Detective Sergeant Phil Parhatka. Reporter Anabel "Bel" Richmond is on vacation in Tuscany and is out for a jog when she spies an abandoned villa and decides to investigate. She stumbles across a recently printed poster and a body's worth of dried blood on a stone floor. She knows instinctively that someone was murdered there and the poster is identical to one used in a ransom note twenty-four years ago. The police and the reporter are going to collided in this excellent mystery thriller that weaves time and people together in a way only Val McDermid can. Ms. McDermid has filled her book with characters you're going to love and characters you're going to hate and she wraps them with emotion and suspense and ties it all up into a dynamite mystery. But why would you be surprised, everybody knows you can't go wrong with a Val McDermid book.

Twenty-four years ago in Scotland a union man turned blackleg, that means he went scabbing. But he wasn't just any union man and those weren't ordinary times. He was Mick Prentice and no stronger believer in the union ever existed. Mick was a pitman in the Lady Charlotte Mine, the miners were on strike and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was determined to break them. Miners have to depend on each other, they're close, so when Mick turned blackleg his family was ostracized. Meanwhile, while Mick was supposedly betraying his friends, desperate kidnappers had taken the daughter and infant grandson of Sir Broderick Maclennan Grant, just about the wealthiest man in Scotland. DI Karen Pirie works cold cases and they don't get any colder than the Maclennan kidnapping. Nobody's working it. Then one day a reporter on vacation in Italy finds some evidence that causes the police to reopen the investigation. Also, Mick Prentice's daughter comes to the coppers to report her father missing. Seems when he went scabbing in 1984 he dropped off the face of the earth and he's needed now, or at least his bone marrow is, because his grandson needs a transplant. Speaking of grandsons, during that kidnapping that went wrong, Sir Broderick's daughter was killed, but the kidnappers made off with the baby. Sir Broderick wants to believe he's still alive and he hires that reporter to find him. The coppers in both Scotland and Italy are looking too. As the investigation continues DI Pirie begins to see some connections, but will she put them together before it's too late. And as in all good thrillers, somebody's life is in danger, but the question is whose. Once you find out, you'll be on pins and needles. There are killers here, but you won't figure out who they are till the end. I went back and looked for the clues and they were there, I just didn't see them. This is a super mystery.

Two families torn apart by violence; one that received major headlines and another that only became apparent many years later. They cannot be linked in any way....right? Author Val McDermid utilizes a dual narrative with a backdrop of the British miner's strike in the 1980s for this psychological thriller that opens old and new wounds in the halls of influence and the rooms of those struggling each day just to make ends meet. Detective Inspector Karen Pirie is the central figure in the search for answers in a missing person's case that only came to many years after the "disappearance" nearly a quarter-century old and the mystery surrounding a kidnapping and murder that could easily carry the moniker of "the crime of the century." The first involves mineworker Mick Prentice and his decision to travel to Nottingham in search of work; essentially betraying his friends and neighbors in a Scottish town as a "scab" laborer. It is winter - about six months into the strike - and there is little food on most tables and even less fuel for the homes. Prentice does "send" money to his family that stayed behind, but never encloses a note. Fast forward to the present to Prentice's daughter, Michelle Gibson, who desperately needs money - and other vital assistance - for the medical care of her severely ill son. Her quest to find her father yields no trace of him ever arriving in Nottingham. Journalist Bel Richmond is on the trail of the high-profile case of the heinous kidnapping of the daughter and grandson of multi-millionaire Sir Broderick Grant, which ends in a ransom payment going terribly wrong and culminates in the murder of the woman and the disappearance of the young child. Richmond has taped together loose ends and found miniscule pieces on the fringes of the "official" story to have solid leads on the kidnappers and the answers to many questions that remained over the years. But the justice that cannot be served in the media could come from Pirie taking up this controversial quest to definitively find the "smoking gun." Through the use of solid character development, flashbacks and social history, McDermid delves into crime and punishment that is caused by jealousies and hatred, while showing that old grudges will remain when the match is ignited by the high-octane fuel of betrayal. McDermid meticulously moves the plot down parallel trails and then brings things together for a dynamic conclusion. The ambitious work shows there are times when the shadows of the past can yield a harsh reality and there are new victims from old stories that are being told with different endings.