Out of Bounds: A Karen Pirie Thriller - Softcover

McDermid, Val

Softcover

ISBN 10: 140870692X ISBN 13: 9781408706923

Publisher: Little, Brown, 2016

Synopsis

'There were a lot of things that ran in families, but murder wasn't one of them ...' When a teenage joyrider crashes a stolen car, a routine DNA test could be the key to unlocking the mystery of a twenty-year-old murder inquiry. Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie is an expert at solving the unsolvable. With each cold case closed, justice is served. So, finding the answer should be straightforward, but it's as twisted as the DNA helix itself. Meanwhile, Karen finds herself irresistibly drawn to another case, one that she has no business investigating. And as she pieces together decades-old evidence, Karen discovers the most dangerous kind of secrets. Secrets that someone is willing to kill for ...Number one bestseller Val McDermid returns with her most atmospheric, spine-chilling and gripping novel to date.

About this title

About the Author

Val McDermid is a No.1 bestseller whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have sold over fifteen 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 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She writes full time and divides her time between Cheshire and Edinburgh.

Review

Praise for Out of Bounds

"McDermid balances the intense character studies in Out of Bounds with an inside view of the Scottish legal system and again shows her acuity in producing intelligent thrillers." --Associated Press

"There are few other crime writers in the same league as Val McDermid." --Washington Post

"A thriller as steely and superlative as its heroine." --O, The Oprah Magazine

"McDermid applies her formidable intelligence and muscular style to the kind of urban crime novel that gives Scotland its tough rep and vigorous lingo . . . It's the brawny characters and their beefy dialect that really keeps us coming back to this superior series." --New York Times

"Readers will easily connect with Karen, whose unwavering confidence is tempered by a strong dose of kindness and sense of justice . . . Satisfying investigative detail, swift pacing, and realistic mysteries steeped in the intricacies of Scottish law; a sure fit for fans of Tana French and of Denise Mina's Alex Morrow series." --Booklist (starred review)

"Engaging . . . Pirie, a tough heroine cut from the same cloth as McDermid's other fictional stalwart, Carol Jordan, never backs down from a thorny question or a seemingly impossible case." --Publishers Weekly

"Karen's refusal to suffer her foolish superiors gladly is very appealing. As is her winning combination of being both brooding and no-nonsense. This . . . entertaining mystery has the grace of a heroine on the verge of coming into her own as a character whom readers will want to spend time with." --Kirkus Reviews

"McDermid's expertly juggled plotlines and masterful handling of pace and tension tick all the best boxes, but what makes this book a real cracker is Pirie herself--grieving, insubordinate and dogged in her pursuit of the various culprits" --The Guardian (UK)

"What superlatives are there left to describe the phenomenon that is the multi award-winning McDermid? . . . Told with McDermid's legendary verve and eye for detail, it grabs the reader by the throat and never lets go." --Daily Mail (UK)

"[An] engaging new novel...McDermid's 30th novel offers fascinating insights into the ethical dilemmas thrown up by advances in forensic science" --Sunday Times (UK)

"On her 30th novel . . . none is more deserving of the queen-of-crime mantle than Val McDermid . . . I would like to see a great deal more of DCI Pirie" --Irish Times

"McDermid concocts complex plots with plenty of twists and red herrings. At times the tension is palpable and there are genuine surprises . . . McDermid is a dab hand at creating enough plausibility to make her contributions to the genre intensely readable" --Glasgow Herald

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 140870692X
• ISBN 13: 9781408706923
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 421