Past Lying: The twisty new Karen Pirie thriller, now a major ITV series

Segueix la línia de totes les novel·les d'aquest personatge.

Holiday literature.

This book marked a welcome return for Val McDermid’s highly empathetic character, Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie, who leads the Historical Crimes Unit in Edinburgh. The novel opens in 2020, shortly after the United Kingdom was plunged into lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid 19. DCI Pirie has opted to spend lockdown in the capacious flat owned by her partner Hamish, although he is now living in the Highlands where he is running a recently acquired still, which he has converted to the production of hand sanitiser. Karen has been joined in Hamish’s flat by her colleague, Daisy Mortimer. The third member of the Unit, Jason (“The Mint) Murray, is in lockdown with his girlfriend Eilidh, and finding that patience with each other is starting to fray.It is Jason who sets this story going, after taking a call from an archivist at Scotland’s National Library. Just before lockdown came into force, she had been working through the papers of a recently deceased successful writer of crime fiction, whose papers had been passed to the Library for retention. She had noticed that the unfinished manuscript of the writer’s last work bore a very close resemblance to the details of the unresolved disappearance of a young woman about a year earlier. In ordinary circumstances, she might have thought nothing of it, but having time on her hands in lockdown, the story had preyed on her mind. DCI Pirie and colleagues also have time on their hands, having been consigned to lockdown themselves, and decide to look into it further.Val McDermid gives us a novel within a novel, and we get to read much of the manuscript. She also offers great insight into the methodology of some authors, and also touches on the potentially awkward subject of authorial jealousy, as one hitherto successful writer’s star wanes while that of a newcomer to the crime fiction scene waxes.As always with McDermid, the storyline is complex but very well managed. There are several different storylines behind the principal one of the investigation. In addition to the normal fits and starts that accompany any developing police case, there are the added complications of Covid. I was also struck by the differences between the regulations prevailing in Scotland, compared to those down in London where I passed my lockdown periods.I remember hearing an interview that Val McDermid gave a couple of years ago supporting the publication of her novel 1979. She had decided to write a novel set in the past because she did not yet feel ready to engage with Covid in her books. I can readily understand that, and two years ago it would have felt all too current.

Karen Pirie ist im Lockdown und Val Mcdermid macht das Beste draus

Geschichte mit Rafiq für mich nicht so ganz schlüssig. Aber Karens Beobachtungen und Gedanken sehr interessant.