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Summary
Summary
"McDermid excels in putting the reader at the center of the action . . . A tightly paced mystery . . . My bones tell me we haven't seen the last of Inspector Pirie--or at least I hope not." --Janet Napolitano, Los Angeles Times on The Skeleton Road
Internationally bestselling author Val McDermid is one of our finest crime writers, whose gripping, impeccably plotted novels have garnered millions of readers worldwide. In her latest, Out of Bounds , she delivers a riveting cold case novel featuring detective Karen Pirie.
When a teenage joyrider crashes a stolen car and ends up in a coma, a routine DNA test reveals a connection to an unsolved murder from twenty-two years before. Finding the answer to the cold case should be straightforward. But it's as twisted as the DNA helix itself.
Meanwhile, Karen finds herself irresistibly drawn to another mystery that she has no business investigating, a mystery that has its roots in a terrorist bombing two decades ago. And again, she finds that nothing is as it seems.
An enthralling, twisty read, Out of Bounds reaffirms Val McDermid's place as one of the most dependable professionals in the mystery and thriller business.
"McDermid melds the political thriller with the police procedural for an intense novel that . . . feels both intensely personal and global . . . Karen . . . once again proves herself a formidable character worthy of her own series."-- Associated Press on The Skeleton Road
Author Notes
Val McDermid was born in Scotland on June 4, 1955. She was the first student from a state school in Scotland accepted to read English at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She graduated in 1975 and became a journalist. She wrote her first novel at the age of 21. It didn't get published, but she turned it into a play entitled Like a Happy Ending. It was performed by the Plymouth Theatre Company and was later adapted for BBC radio. Her first book, Report for Murder, was published in 1987. She is the author of the Lindsay Gordon Mystery series, the Kate Brannigan Mystery series, and the Dr. Tony Hill and Carol Jordan Mysteries series as well as several stand alone books including The Distant Echo, A Darker Domain, Trick of the Dark and Out of Bounds. The Mermaids Singing won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel of the Year.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
At the outset of Scottish author McDermid's engaging if at times overstuffed third Karen Pirie novel (after 2014's The Skeleton Road), 17-year-old Ross Garvie and three mates steal a Land Rover after a night of drinking in Dundee. The subsequent high-speed crash on the Perth road kills his friends and leaves Garvie in a coma. Pirie, head of Police Scotland's tiny Historic Cases Unit in Edinburgh, is intrigued when Garvie's DNA is a familial match to the 20-year-old unsolved rape and murder case of a Glasgow hairdresser. Complications ensue when Pirie tries to track down Garvie's male relatives. Meanwhile, Pirie is hung up on the death of Fife man Gabriel Abbott and how his death is-or isn't-linked to that of his mother in a plane crash 22 years earlier, though it's not Pirie's case. Authorities assumed the plane exploded due to an IRA bomb, but Pirie isn't so sure. Pirie, a tough heroine cut from the same cloth as McDermid's other fictional stalwart, Carol Jordan, never backs down from a thorny question or a seemingly impossible case. Agent: Jane Gregory, Gregory & Company. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
Out of Bounds by Val McDermid; Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman; Blood Wedding by Pierre Lemaitre; Black Night Falling by Rod Reynolds; Blackwater by James Henry Val McDermid's 30th novel, Out of Bounds (Little, Brown, [pound]18.99), is the fourth to feature DCI Karen Pirie, head of Police Scotland's historic cases unit. When a teenage joyrider ends up in a coma, a routine DNA test reveals a close familial match to the perpetrator of an unsolved murder that took place in 1996. Discovering the killer's identity should be a fairly easy task, but, the boy being adopted, Pirie and her sidekick, the doltish but earnest DC Jason Murray, find themselves in a maze of red tape. Pirie, who is struggling to come to terms with the death of her partner, also becomes involved unofficially in the case of Gabriel Abbott, a lonely obsessive who has been found shot dead. DI Alan Noble, in charge of the case, believes it's suicide, but Pirie thinks there might be a link with the death of Abbott's mother, 22 years earlier, in a presumed terrorist attack. McDermid's expertly juggled plotlines and masterful handling of pace and tension tick all the best boxes, but what makes this book a real cracker is Pirie herself -- grieving, insubordinate and dogged in her pursuit of the various culprits. Inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird, Laura Lippman's Wilde Lake (Faber & Faber, [pound]12.99) is set in Maryland, where Luisa "Lu" Brant, newly elected as the first female state's attorney of Howard County, decides to prove herself by prosecuting a drifter accused of beating a woman to death. Intelligent and competitive, Lu comes from a family of achievers who enjoy status and privilege. Her father was a legendary state's attorney for the same county. AJ, her older brother, was a high school hero who saved the life of his friend Davey, the only black kid in their circle, when he was attacked by two brothers who believed he'd raped their sister. Two narratives, both from Lu's point of view, interweave past and present until she finds herself confronted with some unpalatable truths about her relatives. Subtle, moving and intriguing, this excellent book is a complex study of how, as Lu puts it, "we always want our heroes to be better than their times, to hold the enlightened views we have achieved one hundred, fifty, ten years later". Blood Wedding (MacLehose, [pound]12.99) by French author Pierre Lemaitre, translated by Frank Wynne, is the story of nanny Sophie Duguet, who is plagued by nightmares and memory loss. She becomes the subject of a nationwide manhunt after apparently strangling her charge, six-year-old Leo, with a shoelace. There's also the matter of her mother-in-law, who she may have shoved fatally down a staircase, and the mysterious death of her husband, Vincent. On the run and desperate for a new identity, Sophie decides to marry a soldier in the hope that he will be posted abroad, taking her with him -- at which point a second narrator, Frantz, takes up the baton, and it becomes clear that Sophie is not, after all, her own worst enemy. Utterly unpredictable and told with relish, Blood Wedding is a dementedly Hitchcock ian tale of gas-lighting: suspend disbelief and enjoy. Although Rod Reynolds set the bar extraordinarily high for himself with his debut novel, The Dark Inside, it's fair to say that his second book more than lives up to the promise of its predecessor. Black Night Falling (Faber, [pound]12.99) picks up with reporter Charlie Yates in October 1946, six months after his adventure in Texarkana. Yates, newly married and kicking his heels on a small newspaper in California, is asked by an acquaintance to help look into the mysterious deaths of three women in Hot Springs, Arkansas. On arrival, he discovers that his contact has perished in a hotel fire and that nobody in the place -- a sleazy hotbed of gambling, prostitution and corruption -- seems to know anything about the murders. Determined to do the right thing, Yates begins to investigate and soon comes up against some formidable adversaries. Smart plotting, immaculate research, a tersely precise style and a protagonist with a touch of the knight-errant about him add up to pitch-perfect American noir. Blackwater (Quercus, [pound]12.99) is the first in an Essex-based police-procedural series by James Henry, author of the prequels to RD Wingfield's DI Jack Frost books. The year is 1983 -- before the reforms of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act -- and things at Colchester CID are less "procedural" and more laissez-faire than they would be nowadays. DI Nick Lowry and his colleagues grapple with cases including an armed robbery at a post office, a massive shipment of drugs, a headless corpse and a fatal encounter between the local hard boys and the squaddies from the nearby garrison. An impressively complex plot, wonderfully atmospheric descriptions of the bleak estuary landscape, an engaging protagonist and some tasty villains get this series off to a flying start. - Laura Wilson.
Kirkus Review
A fatal car crash leads to information about a cold murder case in the fourth DCI Karen Pirie mystery.The drunken accident reveals DNA which may allow Karen to make an arrest in a decades old rape/murder. But that's only one of three mysteries in the course of the book. There's also the suicide of a local oddball, which may not be a suicide, and the questions surrounding the death of the man's mother years before in a plane explosion hastily credited to the Irish Republican Army. There's also Karen's interactions with a group of Syrian refugees, which stop just short of being sentimental, and her own continuing attempts to get over the murder of her lover and colleague. That the book is so overstuffed is a mark of the current trend for mysteries to weigh in at 400 pages rather than 200 (or less) lean ones. And since the car crash and the information that flows from it are gradually pushed aside in favor of an investigation of the suspicious death and the plane crash, it would have made sense to allot it far less space. What holds the novel together is Karen. Enough of us have encountered stupid people put in positions of power who take delight in running down the far smarter people beneath them that Karen's refusal to suffer her foolish superiors gladly is very appealing. As is her winning combination of being both brooding and no-nonsense. This wayward and entertaining mystery has the grace of a heroine on the verge of coming into her own as a character whom readers will want to spend time with. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Cold-case work in Edinburgh usually begins when routine evidence checks drop DNA hits into DCI Karen Pirie's in-box. This time, a joyrider's DNA is a close match to the perpetrator of a 20-year-old rape and murder. In a perfect world, Karen could sort through his nearest male relatives to find her killer, but the investigation stalls when she discovers that the teen is adopted. While she petitions family court for access to his birth records, Karen is drawn into a pair of murders whose investigation offers the added benefit of riling the Macaroon, her hostile, buffoonish boss. Gabriel Abbott was found shot to death on a public bench, and the circumstances are all the more suspicious considering that his mother was murdered decades ago in a bombing that was unclaimed by terrorist groups. Intrigued by the unlikely coincidence, Karen wields her authority as head of the Historical Crimes Unit to dig into the lives of London's rich and untouchable. Readers will easily connect with Karen, whose unwavering confidence is tempered by a strong dose of kindness and sense of justice. The fourth Karen Pirie novel (following The Skeleton Road, 2014) boasts satisfying investigative detail, swift pacing, and realistic mysteries steeped in the intricacies of Scottish law; a sure fit for fans of Tana French and of Denise Mina's Alex Morrow series.--Tran, Christine Copyright 2016 Booklist
Library Journal Review
DCI Karen Pirie's 22-year-old cold case gets a new rush of energy when 17-year-old Ross Garvie's DNA is a familial hit after he is left comatose in a stolen car crash. Trying to find Garvie's father, however, involves dealing with a new set of red tape. A leak to the media within the force means that Pirie must work quickly. Recently divorced social worker Giorsal Kennedy trades Pirie information on how the bureaucratic system works in these cases in exchange for an outing where the two can catch up. Pirie, mourning the loss of Phil, sleeplessly walks the town at night and decides to find a way to help a group of local Syrian refugees. Meanwhile, DI Alan Noble investigates the suicide of Gabriel Abbott, believing it's an open-and-shut case, but something about it piques Pirie's interest. Not that she has any business investigating a case that isn't cold. And Simon Lees, the assistant chief constable, would love a reason to remove Pirie and her disregard of his authority. -VERDICT McDermid delivers a fun and exciting police procedural for fans of Stephen Booth and Anne Perry in this fourth series installment (after The Skeleton Road). [See Prepub Alert, 6/13/16; library marketing]--Michelle Gilbert, Fox Lake Dist. Lib., IL © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.