PAST LYING BY VAL DERMID
Paperback published by Sphere 1st February 2024
ISBN 9781408729090
Pages 512
Edinburgh, haunted by the ghosts of many writers, is also the cold case beatbox DCI Karen Pirie. So she shouldn’t be surprised when an author’s manuscript appears to be a blueprint for an actual crime. Karen can’t ignore the plot’s chilling similarities to the unsolved case of an Edinburgh University student who vanished from her own doorstep. The manuscript seems to be the key to unlocking what happened to Lara Hardie, but there’s a problem the author died before he finished it.
MY REVIEW
Karen Pirie returns in the masterful new thriller by the Queen of crime Val McDermid.
The Prologue for Past Lying by Val McDermid is a brilliant start to this thriller novel.
Prologue
He really believed it was a madcap game. A joke. A dare, played out between old friends. Why would anyone imagine otherwise? Writing twisted scenarios didn’t mean he believed they happened in the real world. Strangers on a Train had the brilliant premise of two unconnected people swapping murders, but he didn’t believe anybody would be daft enough to try it for real. Not even a card-carrying psychopath like the character in HighSmith’s novel. It had genuinely never crossed his mind that his best friend would actually commit a murder solely to demonstrate that the perfect crime was possible, and that he was capable of committing it. Not until he had to deal with the revelation that there was now a dead body in his garage.
Val McDermid is a number one bestseller whose novels have been translated into more than forty languages, and have sold over eighteen million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold. She writes full-time and divides her time between Edinburgh and East Neuk of Fife. https://www.valmcdermid.com/ https://www.twitter.com/valmcdermid https://www.instagram.com/quineofcrime
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