Silent Bones Val McDermid

SILENT BONES BY VAL MCDERMID A Karen Pirie novel Book 8 of 8

Hardback book published by Shere 23rd October 2025

ISBN 9781408734025

The truth is buried just beneath the surface When torrential rain causes a landslide on a motorway in Scotland, it reveals a crime scene someone hid a body in the tarmac eleven years before, journalists Sam Nimmo had been a prime suspect in the murder of his fiancee when he disappeared, and now DCI Karen Pirie and her Historic Cases Unit must find out who buried him, and why. Meanwhile in Edinburgh, new evidence reopens a closed case and the accidental death of a hotel manager starts to look like murder. But what did Tom Jamieson’s book club have to do with his Demise and what will they do to keep their secrets? Karen and her team begin to untangle a web of lies, one which connects their murder cases with Scotland’s rich and powerful. They will be tested to their limits and possibly beyond.

MY REVIEW

I loved reading Silent Bones the new Karen Pirie novel!

Silent Bones by the Queen of crime is my new favourite crime novel by Val McDermid! I had never thought about that in torrential rain a crime scene tent has to be put up, it just goes to show that the weather isn’t always perfect when a tent has to be put up to cover a body.

In Scotland, Detective Inspector Pete Niven is leading the case he demands the Crime Scene Technicians to put up the crime scene tent in the pouring rain.

Under the tent, a skeleton of a man is found. Due to a skeleton has been found its now in the hands of Historical Cases Unit. Mr Jamieson claims that the skeleton is his brother, Tom, who went missing 5 years ago just before lockdown. Mr Jamieson isn’t happy as at the time of his brothers death, the police wrote it down as an accident. But it wasn’t an accident. His brother Tom was murdered. But who and why did someone murder Tom Jamieson?

About author Val McDermid

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 Dagger for best crime novel of the year and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009, was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2010 and received the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award in 2011. In 2016, Val received the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival and in 2017 received the DIVA Literary Prize for Crime, and was elected a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Val has served as a judge for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize, and was Chair of the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017. She is the recipient of six honorary doctorates and is an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She writes full-time and divides her time between Edinburgh and East Neuk of Fife. https://www.instagram.com/quinofcrime