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...

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...

More than twenty years after the 1984 national miners' strike in Scotland, Cold Case Review Team Inspector Karen Pirie stumbles across new evidence that links the cases of a missing strikebreaker and a kidnapping gone wrong.

McDermid is one of the finest crime writers we have, whose novels have captivated millions of readers worldwide with their riveting narratives of characters who solve complex crimes and confront unimaginable evil. In the course of researching her bestselling novels McDermid has become familiar with every branch of forensics, and now she uncovers the history of this science, real-world murders and the people who must solve them. The dead talk-to the...

"In Insidious Intent, Tony and Carol are on the hunt for a serial killer who forces the duo to confront their most haunting moral dilemma so far. In the north of England, single women are beginning to disappear from weddings. A pattern soon becomes clear: someone is crashing the festivities and luring the women away--only to leave the victims' bodies in their own burned-out cars in remote locations. Tony and Carol are called upon to investigate--but...

"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...

On a freezing day in December 1963, Alison Carter vanishes from her rural village, an insular community that distrusts the outside world. For the young George Bennett, a newly promoted inspector, it is the beginning of his most difficult and harrowing case-a suspected murder with no body, an investigation with more dead ends and closed faces than he'd have found in the anonymity of the inner city, and an outcome that reverberates through the years....

"In this incredible follow-up to the New York Times and USA TODAY bestseller FaceOff, twenty-two of the world's most popular thriller writers come together for an unforgettable anthology. MatchUp takes the never-before-seen bestseller pairings of FaceOffand adds a delicious new twist: gender. Eleven of the world's best female thriller writers from Diana Gabaldon to Charlene Harris are paired with eleven of the world's best male thriller writers, including...