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I just finished An advance of Val McDermid’s A Darker Domain. I really enjoyed it, but in my review for Amazon, which I may or may not be too lazy to edit, I made a wrong assumption and missed a piece of information that I am now quite excited about (remembering it doesn’t take much–at least where books are concerned). I assumed, due to the witty banter and easy rapport between D.I. Pirie and D.S. Phil Parhatka–rapport being something of an understatement, it feels–that this was the latest in a series of detective novels. It isn’t. Although McDermid writes series (back to that in a minute), this is a stand-alone–at least so far. It’s a multi-layered, if unsettlingly coincidental story of a disappearing mineworker, a murdered heiress and her kidnaped son, and the mess that politics, power, and press can make of things when the poor police in Scotland are just trying to do their job. Mostly. Great atmospheric stuff. Begs to be adapted for PBS. Which brings me to my revelation: Val McDermid writes the series of books that became the BBC series “Wire in the Blood,” Doctor Tony Hill, and all that. How did I never look that up?? So if I didn’t have a non-existent book budget and a stack of ten unread tomes at home, I’d be off to buy up a stack of McDermid to bury myself in. She has a great Web site, if you’re inclined: valmcdermid.com

The Delivery Room, by Sylvia Brownrigg is the most literary novel I’ve read in quite some time, and I’m a bit relieved to find that I still have a taste for them. I can get lazy, lapsing, quite enjoyably and easily into escapist thrillers and paperbacks, and then, when I read something more elevated, if I don’t like it, wonder if it’s really not good or I’m just growing braindead. The Delivery Room is pretty cerebral, and, although I struggled a little with the Serbian politics, I was completely engaged from cover to cover.

It’s a look inside the life of a therapist, Mira, native of Serbia, living outside London, long married to a Brit, during the time of the bombings in the 90s. We see glimpses of Mira’s husband, his adult son and wife, family back home, and even bits and pieces of the patients she is treating. It’s a very rich and complicated weave of lives that intertwine at various levels, intermingled with things English and political.
This passage describes Mira’s lack of ease, even as she ostensibly relaxes and awaits the arrival of a client:

“She sat, mute, and unmoving, for an unmeasured time. Perhaps she slept; perhaps she imagined. Eventually the clock arrived at one of her allotted times and her body, used to its rhythms, tensed and wakened. More stories. Other people. Be ready for new material. Protect yourself, cover over, lose your own griefs in another’s.”

The story is mundane, yet unpredictible and full, the characters believable and likeable, even in their eccentricities. It also speaks, in unexpected ways, about motherhood.

Brownrigg is also the author of Morality Tale, and divides her time between Berkeley and London.