In December 2016, I reviewed Out of Bounds by Val McDermid. Back then, I said, “I’m not sure why I haven’t read Val McDermid before, or why I wanted to read this one, but I am so glad it happened…McDermid fans may already be familiar with Chief Inspector Karen Pirie of Police Scotland, as Out of Bounds is #4 in a series with this feisty female protagonist. I plan to read the first three in the series (The Distant Echo, A Darker Domain, and The Skeleton Road), but this story doesn’t require any prior knowledge, and functions as a standalone novel.” Well, I’m embarrassed to say I never got to the first three, but I definitely will now that I have had the opportunity to read #5 in the Karen Pirie series. Many thanks to Grove Atlantic / Atlantic Monthly Press and NetGalley for a copy of Broken Ground in exchange for this honest review.
I love Detective Karen Pirie, and although I know some readers quibble with the fact that it might not be realistic for a detective of her rank to do some of the more mundane tasks she does, I think all that is explained quite well in the context of the details that make her character so REAL and relatable. And she truly is: “She was, she knew, the kind of woman men either dismissed or treated like the sister they were slightly intimidated by.”
Karen is in mourning (no specifics here to avoid any spoilers), and is still not back to feeling safe enough to let people in: “She’d spent most of her adult life in a state of mild wariness, always cautious about letting people too close.” In Broken Ground, she gets the chance to get past that a bit, while working on a fascinating case involving World War II espionage, Indian motorcycles, Nazi looting, and diamonds. Oh, and peat bogs!
A woman named Alice Somerville is searching for her inheritance: a pair of Indian motorcycles reportedly buried in a Scottish peat bog by her grandfather at the end of World War II. When Alice finally locates and uncovers the Indians, she also finds the peat bog also contains a body with a bullet hole between the eyes. Karen Pirie is called in and works this case along with another mystery, all while dealing with a new detective partner, assigned to spy on her by her new boss. That female boss seems to have a problem with Karen, one that too many women have experienced. As Karen notes “So few women made it to the top of the tree and for evert one of them who understood the importance of solidarity, there was one ready with an axe.”
Even more than when reading the Lynley/Havers novels by Elizabeth George, I find myself using the dictionary feature of my Kindle a LOT when reading Val McDermid, and even then for some of the words I needed to infer meaning from context. For example, it was easy to find that keelie, doddle, and drookit were all pejorative names for certain characters, and my dictionary helped me with oxters (armpits) and braw morning, but I was on my own with “snell north wind,” “gallus swagger,” and “cheffy TV shows.” All of McDermid’s descriptions of Scottish locations are vivid. This is particularly true for Edinburgh, as noted in this line Karen comes across in a newspaper: “underneath the glamorous skirts of the Athens of the North are some very shabby shoes.”
Lots of plot twists and some suspense, great characters, and sure to be enjoyed by fans of Val McDermid, Tana French, or Elizabeth George. Four stars.