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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 10, No. 12 |
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McDermid turns up a solid
'cold case' murder mystery
of TheColumnists.com
Val McDermid continues to offer proof that she's now one of the world's foremost mystery writers with her latest thriller--a "cold case" classic she calls "A Darker Domain" (HarperCollins, $24.99).
Introducing Detective Inspector Karen Pirie, head of the cold case review team for the Fife Constabulary in Scotland, who looks likely to be the fourth series detective she has created in her 22 novels, McDermid this time has fashioned her hero on herself. In her own words, Karen is "a wee fat woman," not likely to ever be mistaken for a beauty contestant, but like McDermid herself, possessed of a razor wit and an obvious keen intellect.
Karen is drawn into the case of a man gone missing for 23 years when his grown daughter files a way overdue missing persons report. In time she discovers this case is linked to another, seemingly much more important "cold case"--the discovery of new evidence in the kidnap-murder of an heiress and the disappearance of her infant child in 1985.
Working under the supervision of a bureaucratic incompetent Karen and her subordinates laughingly refer to as "The Macaroon," Karen has to work on the case of long-missing coal miner Mick Prentice pretty much off the schedule because the boss wants all her team's energy devoted to the new evidence uncovered in the Grant kidnapping case by a tourist in the Tuscany region of Italy. The official enthusiasm for that case is motivated by the pressure brought to bear on the department by Sir Broderick Maclennan Grant, rich and powerful father of the kidnapped and murdered heiress, grandfather to the child whose body never was found.
That screwed-up case has been a humiliating one for the police because the heiress, Catriona "Cat" Maclennan Grant, was killed in a dark and confusing shootout between police and the kidnappers. Somehow the kidnappers got away with the dead girl's child and the ransom money. To make matters even worse, Karen herself was instrumental in later uncovering the corrupt activity of the primary police investigator on that case, providing the evidence that put him behind bars for murder, bringing about a disgrace to the department it's still trying to recover from decades later.
Naturally, The Macaroon wants her team going all stops out on that case. As for the case of the missing coal miner, everybody seems to know what happened to him anyway: He went missing in the midst of a devastating miner's strike that had crippled the community. The day before he vanished, Mick Prentice was seen in the company of several other local miners who broke from the ranks of union members and went off to do "scab" work elsewhere. Branded a "blackleg" by fellow strikers, Prentice hasn't been mourned by anyone, especially his disgraced and impoverished family, until his daughter finally stepped forward to seek some official answers to his disappearance because her dying child needs a bone marrow transplant and the missing father may be her only hope.
Working very old, very cold criminal cases that haven't been looked at in decades is tough, arduous work because so many of the potential witnesses have either died or moved elsewhere. But Karen finds the kidnap-murder case even more intimidating because Sir Broderick Maclennan Grant has hired sensation-mongering journalist Bel Richmond to work on the case independently, promising her the full story if she develops any leads that result in either the finding of his grandson or identifying the kidnappers.
McDermid is a master juggler and she needs all that skill to handle all the potential leads and suspects while Karen and Bel follow their own paths to the heart of a most complex and frightening mystery. The way she dovetails the diverse storylines of her cast of characters is truly impressive and results in a fully credible and most exciting finish to this intriguing thriller.
McDermid's greatetst success to date has been with her series of novels about criminal psychologist Tony Hill, whose graphic and terrifying cases have become the British TV series "Wire in the Blood" starring Robson Green as Dr. Hill. D.I. Karen Pirie seems a strong candidate to become a series character in print and, since Val McDermid closely resembles her, maybe some enterprising TV producer ought to consider casting her to play the part, just the way Mickey Spillane wound up playing his own Mike Hammer in the 1963 British film "The Girl Hunters."
I'm sure those of us who have met Val McDermid would believe she could pull it off--or at least handle it as well as Mickey Spillane did.
Meanwhile, though, "A Darker Domain" is a fabulous tale for the printed page and shouldn't be missed by true msytery fans.
©2009 by Ron Miller. The book cover reproduction is courtesy of HarperCollins. This column first posted Feb. 23, 2009.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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