Val McDermid

"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. It's a cold case that should be straightforward. But it's as twisted as the DNA helix itself. Meanwhile, Karen is mired in grief and guilt after the death of her partner. She finds herself irresistibly drawn to another mystery that she has no business investigating, a mystery that has its...

"It's April 2020 and Edinburgh is in lockdown. It would seem like a strange time for a cold case to go hot-the streets all but empty, an hour's outdoor exercise the maximum allowed-but a mere pandemic doesn't mean crime takes a holiday. When a source at the National Library contacts DCI Karen Pirie's team about documents in the archive of a recently deceased crime novelist, it seems it's game on again. At the center of it, a novel: two crime novelists...

When a body is discovered in the remote depths of the Highlands, DCI Karen Pirie finds herself in the right place at the right time. Unearthed with someone's long-buried inheritance, the victim seems to belong to the distant past - until new evidence suggests otherwise, and Karen is called in to unravel a case where nothing is as it seems. It's not long before an overheard conversation draws Karen into the heart of a different case, however - a shocking...

"It's 1989 and journalist Allie Burns is growing up. Older and maybe wiser than the hustling young hack we met in 1979, she's running the northern news operation of the Sunday Globe, chafing at losing her role in investigative journalism and at the descent into the gutter of the UK tabloid media. But there's plenty to keep her occupied. The year begins with the memorial service for the victims of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, but Allie has barely...

In this modern retelling of Austen's classic, bookish minister's daughter Cat Morland joins her well-to-do friends in Edinburgh and falls for an up-and-coming lawyer who may harbor unsettling secrets.

"A thousand years ago in an ancient Scottish landscape, a woman is on the run with her three companions--a healer, a weaver, and a seer. The men hunting her will kill her--because she is the only one who stands between them and their violent ambition. She is no lady: she is the first queen of Scotland, married to a king called Macbeth. As the net closes in, what unfurls is a tale of passion, forced marriage, bloody massacre, and the harsh realities...

World-class crime writer Val McDermid has sold millions of copies of her books worldwide. In The Retribution, clinical psychologist Tony Hill and detective Carol Jordan face a terrifying reality: serial killer Jacko Vance has escaped imprisonment-and appears hellbent on revenge against those who put him behind bars. "Be very afraid as you meet a truly inventive serial killer. Val McDermid's 25th novel is stunningly good."-Times (UK)

Guilt and grief have driven a wedge between partners psychologist Tony Hill and ex-DCI Carol Jordan. But just because they're not talking doesn't mean the killing stops. Someone is killing women who bear an unsettling resemblance to Jordan. And when the evidence begins to point in a disturbing direction, thinking the unthinkable seems the only possible answer. Cornered by events, Tony and Carol are forced to fight for themselves-- and each other--...

"Crime-writing powerhouse Val McDermid is back with an explosive new thriller that sees psychological profiler Tony Hill and ex-detective Carol Jordan grappling with the consequences of their actions and the legacy of abuse in the Catholic Church. Construction is halted on the redevelopment of an orphanage after dozens of skeletons are found buried on the grounds dating from between twenty and forty years ago. Then a different set of skeletons are...

'Death is a hollow drum whose beat has measured out my adult life.' So writes Jay Macallan Stewart in her latest volume of memoirs. But nobody has ever asked whether that has been by accident or design. Nobody, that is, until Jay turns her sights on newly-wed and freshly-widowed Magda Newsam. For Magda's mother Corinna is an Oxford don who knows enough of Jay's history to be very afraid indeed. Determined to protect her daughter, Corinna turns to...