Karen Pirie #7
This is the series I think of as Val McDermid’s “gentler” series. Unlike the gruesomeness of the Tony Hill books, these books are more cerebral. Cerebral in an un-putdownable way. Karen Pirie heads up Edinburgh’s cold case squad – called in Scotland the HCU or Historical Cases Unit. At the close of the last book, Karen and her squad mate, Daisy, had agreed to go into lockdown together as COVID was just taking its hold on the world. At that moment, it seemed like lockdown would be a few short weeks, but as this novel opens COVID is in full swing.
I’ve read several excellent mysteries which have examined our experiences with the pandemic, and this is one of them. The unfortunate sidebar is that it brings the pandemic all back in a rush – the isolation, the masks, and of course the overcrowded hospitals and the deaths. The one nice thing about the pandemic, however, was the quiet and lack of traffic, and the quiet and the chance for a city walkabout are what keeps Karen sane as she and Daisy adjust to living with each other and to lockdown (for Daisy, this includes a lot of chocolate).
And because of the pandemic and the squad’s desire to keep busy at something, they follow a lead called in from a librarian at Scotland’s National Library. She’s discovered an unfinished manuscript in the files she’s organizing of a recently deceased bestselling crime novelist, and the story seems to eerily and creepily explain the mysterious disappearance of one Lara Hardie. The manuscript is titled The Vanishing of Laurel Oliver, and it’s the story of two crime writers, one on the way up, one on the way down, who play chess together. The one on the downward swing begins to plot the perfect murder – one that would implicate the other writer and leave him in every way the obvious killer.
Maybe only a crime writer could have planned that plot, and McDermid is one of the best in the biz. The sly nods to the crime writing community, the way publishing and fandom function, is done with affection as well as with obvious knowledge of the community’s inner workings. The complication of the book and for the squad working the case is finding connections between the real Lara Hardie and the fictional Laurel Oliver.
This is a book of meticulous and careful police work as the connections are uncovered as the case proceeds. One member of the squad is dealing with a serious case of COVID in his family; Karen is struggling with her relationship to her boyfriend. She’s living in his apartment while he’s in the north of Scotland making a killing on hand sanitizer. There’s also a Syrian refugee in the mix. McDermid balances these different threads with the ease of an expert.
She’s also got a little message about male bullying and entitlement, and though it’s fairly subtle, it’s a definite theme relating to the two male, chess playing protagonists of the novel. However, as I was churning through the pages I had to think back a bit to take it in. McDermid is nothing if not a gifted storyteller. Similar to writers like Ann Cleeves, Peter Robinson and Deborah Crombie, these books are a slow burn, but once the fire catches you really can’t look away.
The book ends post COVID but it’s brought changes to everyone’s life and to the characters in Karen Pirie’s universe. McDermid makes an experience lived through by everyone on the planet a shared one, and she’s helping us to take it in and reflect on it. In the guise, of course, of a rocket powered crime novel. — Robin Agnew