A Darker Domain: A Novel
by Val Mcdermid
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Book Summary Information
Author: Val McdermidEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2009-01-27
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Harper
Book Reviews of A Darker Domain: A Novel
Book Review: HISTORY AND MYSTERY IN SCOTLAND
Summary: 4 Stars
Blend crime, historic social commentary, mysterious doings and place them in Scotland. That's a recipe for an intriguing story which is precisely what acclaimed writer Val McDermid serves up in A Darker Domain. Those familiar with McDermid's work know that her novels are multi-layered, carefully plotted and forcefully written.
A young woman, Misha, goes to report a missing person. When she is asked how long the person has been missing her reply is "Twenty-two and a half years. Since Friday the fourteenth of December 1984, to be precise. Is that long enough for you to take it seriously?"
Why now, why wait so long to try to find someone? McDermid's story begins with a mystery and more follow in quick succession, all leading inexorably to a startling conclusion. Ah, but the fun for a reader is in getting there as the past and the present are woven together and related from various viewpoints.
The missing person is Misha's father, Mike Prentice, who left his family and home in 1984 during the national miner's strike to join other strikebreakers in Nottingham. Or, so it is believed. DI Karen Pirie, head of the Cold Case Review Team, wants to know what really happened to Prentice.
In 1985 an heiress, Catriona Maclennan Grant and Adam, her small son, were kidnaped. In the worst of all possible scenarios she is killed and Adam disappears. Leap frog from Scotland and to a quarter century later - a journalist vacationing in Tuscany discovers what may be of import to that case. Pirie is summoned to Catriona's father's home. He is wealthy almost beyond measure and one of the most powerful men in Scotland.
Too many switches in time and narrative voices were disconcerting for this reader as well as a cloudy relationship between the cases Pirie faces. Nonetheless, few can match the setting recreated by McDermid and the authenticity she brings to a Scottish police mystery. In this, her 25th book, descriptions of the miners and their families are particularly moving as McDermid comes from a mining family, and spent time with her grandparents in East Wemyss where much of the book's action takes place. She has well described the plight of the miners in 1984 in passages ringing with intensity and passion.
- Gail Cooke
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