She cannot sleep as her lover and colleague, Phil Parhatka, was killed in the last outing in this series ( The Skeleton Road). 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. The Hill/Jordan series has been adapted for television under the name Wire in the Blood, starring Robson Green. I even liked the Syrian refugee subplot generated thanks to Pirie’s late night strolls through the streets of Edinburgh.

As with most cold cases, this one is far from simple, though the politics involved extend well-past Bloody Sunday retribution. She also stumbles into another cold case, a small airplane bombed years ago supposedly by the IRA and all four passengers were killed. Often at the end of the day, she knew there was no point in stripping to the skin and sliding between cool sheets. Out of Bounds is the fourth book in a series featuring DCI Karen Pirie but can easily be read as a standalone police procedural. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation.I marvelled at the volume of information divulged in each case,the myriad twists and turns and how the cases were resolved,in their own unique way,although not to everyone's satisfaction. There's also Karen's interactions with a group of Syrian refugees, which stop just short of being sentimental, and her own continuing attempts to get over the murder of her lover and colleague. She hails from the Kirkcaldy town of Fife in Scotland and completed her college studies from the St.

McDermid effectively shows this balance, as well as adding a number of characters who are able to coax out all this sentiments from the protagonist. The author is a master of characterisation to the point where you almost feel like you are reading a True Crime story from the POV of each involved in the case! There's also a strand in the book about some of the Syrian refugees who have come to Scotland fleeing from the horrors in their own country. I lived in Edinburgh for ten years so loved the nostalgia trip of being able to picture all the streets, buildings and monuments. I would like to thank NetGalley, Grove Atlantic and the author Val McDermid for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.Tina McDonald was on a night out with some friends in Glasgow when she disappeared from the group before being found dead the next morning. The prose has a kind of gallus capacity to twist a cliché into something new – a little white lie, in Karen’s book, is neither little nor white; an interview turns out to be an “unlucky break”; “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it,” she instructs. Wresting with the bureaucratic red tape and awaiting a sheriff's approval to access the original birth certificate, Pirie must bide her time, a trait she does not come by naturally. The youths are joyriders in a stolen car but this time there is a fatal accident and DNA samples opens up a sensitive cold case. Karen’s character is the reason to read this series- there’s just something about her that seems so real.