Karen Pirie: Val McDermid's fascinating cold case series

I've always been interested in cold case stories. There is something about the historic nature of the crimes and the dogged pursuit of justice for the victims that fascinates me. Someone has gotten away with murder for a long time, and is just out there living their life. That's hard to reconcile.

These ideas form the premise for Val McDermid's Karen Pirie series. DCI Pirie heads up a Historic Cases Unit in Scotland and battles to keep the unit going with police interest in cold cases waxing and waning.

I'm a huge Val McDermid fan, and the Karen Pirie series showcases McDermid's skills as a crime writer. The books provide interesting insight into how cold cases are investigated and solved. There's enough investigative and forensic detail for the reader's interest without overwhelming. The Scottish setting adds atmosphere and grit to the cases. There are usually multiple cases and timelines on the go, but McDermid manages to juggle everything capably, and the stories are never confusing.

Karen is dogged in her pursuit of justice, she is a straight shooter who has no agenda other than to find answers to crimes no one else cares about. I love the way Karen cares deeply for the victims of historic crimes and the people affected by them, and it is obvious to the reader how determined Karen is to find a resolution to these cases. As a series, I've come to know and love Karen and I like that her life outside of work is also woven into the stories. Each novel can be read on its own although working your way through the books in order adds depth to the reading experience as there are elements of Karen's personal life that develop as the series progresses. The cast of support players is well fleshed out, including Karen's DC, Jason "The Mint" Murray and River Wilde, Karen's friend and forensic anthropologist. These characters add depth to the stories without being overdone and McDermid does a really nice job of weaving them into the cold cases that also fleshes out Karen's characterisation.

Val McDermid writes with passion for the crime genre, offering up solid investigative stories, not fast paced but intriguing enough to keep you reading. If you're interested in cold case investigations, Karen Pirie is a must! At the time of writing this post, there are seven books in the Karen Pirie series. Book 8, Silent bones (2025) is on my 'to read' list. I've read the other seven, most of them twice. Check out my thoughts below.

Karen Pirie series | Books 1-6 | Published 2003-2020

Val McDermid begins the Karen Pirie series with The distant echo, published in 2003. Karen is introduced into the novel but she's not the main player, so perhaps McDermid's plan was to introduce her slowly into the series and concentrate on practising her cold case concept in the first novel. There's not much detail about Karen in this first book, so it stands alone as a cold case thriller.

The distant echo is a cracking introduction to the cold case investigations series. The 25-year-old unsolved murder of Rosie Duff in St Andrews resurfaces after one of the four boys accused of the crime at the time dies in suspicious circumstances. The investigation brings the boys-now-men together again as the remaining three must again fight for their innocence while in fear of their safety.

The story alternates between the current investigation and the events leading up to and after Rosie is murdered in the middle of a blizzard after her shift at a local bar. The boys find Rosie bleeding in the snow on their way back to the university after a party, but by the time first responders arrive, Rosie is dead. They naturally fall under suspicion, and a good chunk of the book is dedicated to the police's attempt to have them charged.

McDermid creates four compelling characters in the four boys who stand accused of Rosie's murder. She crafts a compelling story in both the past and present narratives, and each story is clearly communicated, exploring the themes of presumed guilt, revenge, class, and changing societal expectations of women. I was eager to turn each page to find out what was going to happen. I didn't guess the ending of this one so kudos to McDermid for clever storytelling.

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Darker domain comes next, published in 2008. Karen is now a Detective Inspector in charge of Police Scotland's Historic Cases Unit. Pirie's new case is the investigation of a miner 25 years earlier. Assumptions were made that the man left of his own accord to work as a scab in England during the miners' strike. The missing man's daughter is desperate to find out if he is alive as her son needs a lifesaving bone marrow transplant. McDermid's insights into the miners' strike adds a layer of interest to the story, although some reviewers have commented on the transparency of McDermid's politics. Darker domain has class as its core theme with a sprinkling of revenge.

Karen is also investigating a botched kidnapping of a wealthy heiress, Catriona Maclennan Grant, and her son, Adam, at the time of the miners' strike. During the ransom exchange, Catriona is shot and killed and the kidnappers flee with Adam. Adam's grandfather is still looking for answers and the trail leads Karen to Tuscany to uncover Adam's whereabouts.

Darker domain is a complex read and McDermid wraps everything up in a masterful way, but readers do need to pay attention. All the players in both cases are artfully drawn and I thought McDermid did a nice job of balancing both stories and transitioning backward and forwards in time to hold the reader's interest and create a clear path to the story's conclusion. The ending isn't explicitly stated, and McDermid cleverly leaves it up to the reader to bring all the threads together. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending to this one, though, but I will leave it up to you to decide.

Karen starts to come into her own in this novel, demonstrating her dogged and no-nonsense approach to achieving closure in historic cases. McDermid skillfully shows the challenge that cold case investigators face and I became completely immersed in both investigations. The reader gets to know Karen in book 2 and I warmed to her even more. There are some elements of her personal life that the reader is given a glimpse of that helps with this connection. Jason "The Mint" Murray is also introduced in book 2, Karen's loyal colleague who grows into a fabulous character as the series progresses.

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Book 3, The skeleton road (2014), is one of my favourites of the books so far, largely for the historical part of the book that connects the cold case to the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Revenge is absolutely at the core of this book.

The story starts with the discovery of a skeleton at the top of a crumbling building in Edinburgh that is later found to be the remains of a man from the former Yugoslavia. The case takes Karen to Oxford, to interview Professor Maggie Blake who has connections to the Balkans and was once in a relationship with a Croatian general, Dimitar Petrovic.

I found the focus on the Balkan Wars and the past and present exploration of this period in history interesting. The book is quite a heavy read as expected given the subject matter, and the parts of the book devoted to the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia are disturbing and distressing. McDermid took the story to a place I wasn't expecting and the ending is quite shocking. That said, I loved book 3 for the focus on the Balkans Wars and for another chance to spend time with Karen and DC Jason Murray.

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Book 4, Out of bounds (2016), is another of my favourites. I like it partly for the development of the relationship between Karen and DC Jason Murray. Karen is also dealing with a personal issue that sees her struggling to stay afloat.

McDermid takes an intriguing approach to cold case investigations in this book after the DNA of a boy injured in a car accident is found to link to an historic rape and murder case. Karen and Jason investigate the murder some twenty years earlier and find links to the bombing of a light plane around the same time. There is also a suspicious death in the present that seems connected to one of the cases that adds another dimension to the investigations. Greed is at the heart of book 4 and just some genuinely selfish and nasty people.

The book is complex (and quite an emotional read) although not hard to follow. There are bits that I guessed and others I did not. Even if the reader does guess what is going on, McDermid's storytelling skills and intricate plotting and characterisations make the journey to the end fulfilling. In addition to the relatable, authentic and dogged Karen (and the nicely developing working relationship with Jason), this book is a compelling read for the exploration of how the evidence is uncovered and pieced together to solve all three crimes. Out of bounds is a rather clever piece of cold case writing and kudos to McDermid for crafting a powerful and suspenseful story.

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Broken Ground (2018) is book 5 and another cracking story that increased my love for Karen and for historic case stories. In Broken Ground, Karen is called to investigate the discovery of two preserved vintage motorbikes in a remote Highland peat bog and the dead body found within. The cold case takes Karen and her team back to WW2 but also to recent times, when artifacts from the mid 1990s are found with the body. Again, greed and selfishness are strong themes in the book. There's a bonus additional current case that Karen ends up involved in after she overhears a conversation in an Edinburgh café.

Broken ground is very much a Scottish book. The landscape of the Highlands where the motorbikes are found is beautifully evoked, so much so that it almost becomes another character in the novel. A new character is introduced in book 5 who becomes part of Karen's personal life for the next few books. I enjoyed my reading journey in Broken ground as the story is unique and complex and takes the reader down a pathway of twists and turns to the ending. As with all the books in the series, the pacing is measured, but I find the exploration of how Karen ferrets out the truth interesting to read, and the multiple layers of the investigations make for an intriguing wander to the end.

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Book 6, Still life, published in 2020, is the most complex of all seven books to date. Karen and Jason are drawn into a cold case after a body is pulled from the sea and is identified as the prime suspect in a decade-old investigation. There's also a skeleton that has been discovered in campervan in a woman's garage. Both cases, though not connected, uncover a bunch of secrets, lies and betrayals, the core themes of the book.

Karen has juggled multiple cases in past books, but they are often connected. This time, she is juggling two unconnected cases, one of which takes her to Paris to investigate the background of one of the case's victims. There's a mix of the political and the artistic worlds in Still life and the book is complicated. I've read it twice and both times it took some effort to keep up. That said, the stories are well constructed and explained, the pacing even (although it ramps up at the end when Jason closes in on the killer in the campervan case) and my attention was held throughout the reading journey.

A new cold case investigator, DS Daisy Mortimer, is introduced in book 6. I like her! She provides a nice balance with Jason whom I have grown to love as he has grown into his role in Karen's unit. I liked the way Karen and Jason's relationship develops in this book, especially after Jason is injured investigating the campervan case.

Still life was published in 2020 and McDermid introduces the pandemic at the end of the book. I wondered at the time of reading where the next book might go. See my review of book 7 below to find out.

Karen Pirie series rating books 1-6: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Past lying | Karen Pirie book 7 | Published October 2023 | Read January 2024

The seventh outing is set in 2020, in the midst of the first pandemic lockdown. McDermid wrote the book in 2023 (in New Zealand, actually, when she was working in the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Otago). McDermid explains in the author's notes that she needed some distance to reflect back on the dark days of COVID before tackling a novel set during those times. It is inevitable that a bunch of books have and will come out that are set during the pandemic, partly to ensure that that period in history is preserved. I didn't baulk at the COVID context in the novel and I think McDermid handles it with sensitivity. She paints a vivid picture of the isolation, the empty streets, the rules governing contact with people, and the trauma of dealing with loved ones who became ill. The trouble is, COVID is too much centre stage for me, and I started to find the references to masking up, contact bubbles, social distancing, and daily exercise all a bit much. I get it, but perhaps McDermid could have dialled it all back just a little.

There is a strong premise for the case that is set in the quarantine period and McDermid cleverly manages to create the set up, allowing the team to work on a cold case within the confines of the regulations. There is lots of stuff about how Police Scotland navigated investigative work during these regulations that add interest to the story.

The case kicks off after a librarian comes across documents in the National Library Archives of a recently deceased Scottish crime author. She alerts Karen's cold case team to the discovery of an incomplete manuscript in the archives with disturbing parallels to the case of missing university student, Lara Hardie, who disappeared without a trace twelve months earlier. Karen, DC Jason 'The Mint' Murray, and new addition DS Daisy Mortimer (introduced in the previous book) piece together the events in the novel with the now-cold investigation into Lara's death. They look into the deceased author's past, his wife's, and that of his fellow novelist friend.

McDermid has the bones of a good idea here, but it isn't enough to carry an entire 400+ page novel. Karen and Daisy read through the manuscript (and the reader is taken painstakingly through all of it), so the crime is basically laid out for the reader from the get-go. Weirdly, Karen, Jason and Daisy take a long time to frame the investigation around the events in the book. They seem surprised by a bunch of things that I thought are quite clear in the manuscript, and that was odd. I kind of get it, as they needed to establish with some certainty that the manuscript does in fact mirror real life, but this meant the story becomes unnecessarily drawn out and without much action or case development. I don't usually figure out what's going on in Val McDermid's crime novels, but I did so easily in Past lying. There isn't much mystery to it so it isn't hard to figure out. Added to that, when Karen and her team finally cotton on to things, the action concludes quite abruptly and that makes the novel's pace feel uneven and the ending rushed.

There are several sub-plots in the novel that have nothing to do with the case, and this is unusual for DCI Pirie novels. In Past lying, there is a COVID-related side story (and I get that, but still, it took up a lot of space) and also one involving a Syrian refugee. The latter doesn't add much value, which is a shame, as it has the potential to be an intriguing and worthy storyline. There is a lesbian storyline, too, that feels shoehorned in, and as a result is undercooked. My feeling is that could have been left out, or developed more fully to give the character and the subject better treatment.

Overall, Past lying is disappointing and easily my least favourite of the seven Karen Pirie novels so far. I've loved Karen up until this point as she's been uncompromising in her pursuit of justice and never worried about treading on toes or playing political games to get a result. She's felt empathetic and firmly on the side of the victims, determined not to let cold cases be forgotten. In book 7, Karen comes across as self-righteous and a bit obnoxious. She's all for flouting the rules to solve a case, yet she spends most of Past lying judging other people for the same behaviour. Karen's characterisation seems flat and I felt like I was reading a different character to the one I've grown to love in the previous books. Karen has alway been prickly, but in Past lying she sounds rude and disrespectful. I suppose you could blame the pandemic for the change, but it seemed too severe to me.

I've loved all of Val McDermid's books for such a long time now. Finding the Allie Burns series and the latest Karen Pirie novel failing to live up to McDermid's usual standard is discomforting. Let's hope future novels get back on track!

Side bar: The true hero of the story is the archive librarian. She is the main reason for my rating (and my past love of Karen). The librarian alerts Karen's team to the potential link between the unpublished manuscript and the cold case, even if it seems odd that she would have read a 100 page document while cataloguing the author's materials. Yay for bad ass librarians, though!

Book 7 rating: ⭐⭐⭐