allthepage

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