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3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
I received an e-ARC from Netgalley in return for an honest review.
This was a great outing for Karen Pirie. I really liked that we’re starting to see her incorporate her grief into her new world and move forward into the future.
As always, there’s an interesting historical case and a b-case that’s more modern but very thought provoking and I enjoyed both stories and loved seeing them come to conclusion.
I think enough threads were left open for the next book that I’m really looking forward to how Karen interacts with some new enemies (as well as some new advocates and friends).
If you’re a fan of McDairmid and Karen Pirie, you’re going to enjoy this!
This was a great outing for Karen Pirie. I really liked that we’re starting to see her incorporate her grief into her new world and move forward into the future.
As always, there’s an interesting historical case and a b-case that’s more modern but very thought provoking and I enjoyed both stories and loved seeing them come to conclusion.
I think enough threads were left open for the next book that I’m really looking forward to how Karen interacts with some new enemies (as well as some new advocates and friends).
If you’re a fan of McDairmid and Karen Pirie, you’re going to enjoy this!
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Where do I start? I read these books solely for the mysteries, as I detest the main character more with each entry in this series. I have no idea why the author thinks making Karen Pirie less frumpy will counterbalance her obnoxious know-it-all personality. Halfway through reading this one, I actually made this note: Karen will realize (begrudgingly!) that she engenders more respect when she wears a little lipstick and invests in well-tailored clothing. And it actually happens in the final chapters!
Isn’t it strange that EVERY other officer is incompetent, corrupt, substandard (except, of course, for your conveniently DECEASED lover—no one can live up to him). Guess what (who) is the common denominator here….
She is so dismissive of both her superiors and subordinates (poor long-suffering Jason!), despite the fact she has yet to cleanly solve a case without resorting to questionable tactics ranging from shading the truth to outright planting evidence. In this book she is complicit in two people’s deaths, but her buddies all abrogate any responsibility she might have had in the events—not St. Karen!
The book was also twice as long as it needed to be, as for some reason it felt the need to solve three separate crimes and introduce a love interest for Pirie. Maybe she can stop “accidentally losing weight” now that she has someone to help her through her “grief.”
Finally, granted that it’s irrational pettiness based on how much these stories are wearing thin, but I have to warn readers away from the audiobook. While the lovely Scottish brogue of the narrator usually elevates the story, this particular book has multiple American characters, and her attempted “Wisconsin” accents grated on my last nerve.
Isn’t it strange that EVERY other officer is incompetent, corrupt, substandard (except, of course, for your conveniently DECEASED lover—no one can live up to him). Guess what (who) is the common denominator here….
She is so dismissive of both her superiors and subordinates (poor long-suffering Jason!), despite the fact she has yet to cleanly solve a case without resorting to questionable tactics ranging from shading the truth to outright planting evidence. In this book she is complicit in two people’s deaths, but her buddies all abrogate any responsibility she might have had in the events—not St. Karen!
The book was also twice as long as it needed to be, as for some reason it felt the need to solve three separate crimes and introduce a love interest for Pirie. Maybe she can stop “accidentally losing weight” now that she has someone to help her through her “grief.”
Finally, granted that it’s irrational pettiness based on how much these stories are wearing thin, but I have to warn readers away from the audiobook. While the lovely Scottish brogue of the narrator usually elevates the story, this particular book has multiple American characters, and her attempted “Wisconsin” accents grated on my last nerve.
adventurous
informative
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A mystery, well written, light and easy to read. Learned a lot about the Scottish highlands and a lot of new words (said the American, lol). A good easy read to the pass the time.
adventurous
dark
inspiring
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book was a five until the end. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole story and then felt like the end was rushed. I didn't get the kind of resolution I was expecting, and it felt like the story deserved better. That said, I think this was my favorite of the series so far. I loved the look at grief and the glimpses of Edinburgh.
Another cracking story from the Queen of Tartan Noir. Broken Ground is the fifth installment of the Karen Pirie series. Inspector Pirie is called in when antique motorbikes are found in a highland peat bog, along with a bullet-ridden body. Once again, she is pulled on a quest for justice. 4 stars
Peat bogs are dangerous places...
DCI Karen Pirie of Police Scotland’s Historic Cases Unit is in the middle of re-investigating a series of rapes when she is diverted to a crime scene in the Highlands. A woman and her husband are on a kind of treasure hunt, looking for something that the woman’s grandfather buried in a peat bog long ago. They find the spot, but when they dig down into the peat, they are shocked to discover not only the looted items but the body of a man, almost perfectly preserved. The body only dates back to the 1990s, though, so Karen must unravel the mystery of who killed the man and why. And Karen also finds herself involved almost by accident in the investigation of another crime, one that she hoped she’d prevented. Meantime her new boss has given her an extra team member, a thing Karen would be grateful for if only she felt there wasn’t an ulterior motive behind it...
I’m thoroughly enjoying the Karen Pirie books and this is another excellent addition to the series. Now that a national police force has taken the place of the old regional forces in Scotland in real life, it gives fiction writers the ability to have their detectives travel all over the country, and McDermid is as comfortable writing about the Highlands as she is her hometown of Edinburgh. I’m biased, I know, but I love that McDermid has set this series back in Scotland after too long away. She gives an amazingly good sense of place and a wholly authentic feel to contemporary Scottish life. Forget the unrealistic gun-totin’ gang wars of so much “Tartan Noir” or the tartan twee of the cosier side of Scottish crime fiction (usually written by nostalgic Canadians or Americans). This is modern Scotland: warts and all, for sure, but also with a vibrant, well educated population and a professional police force where dysfunctional drunken mavericks wouldn’t be tolerated.
This falls very much under the category of police procedural rather than mystery or thriller. Karen and her team identify their suspect fairly early on and most of the book is about how they go about finding the evidence to make a case that would stand up in court. It’s an intriguing and realistic look at how policing is done, but could perhaps be a little dull in the wrong hands. McDermid, however spices the whole thing up by having the HCU working on other cases alongside the main one, by throwing in some office politics, and by having some great characterisation of Karen herself, her young sidekick Jason, her friends and colleagues, not to mention the suspects and witnesses they deal with along the way. Karen is well into recovery from her grief now (deliberately vague, in case people haven’t read the earlier books) and McDermid has handled that whole storyline superbly, I feel – never letting it be forgotten or glossed over, but not making either Karen or the reader wallow endlessly.
Downsides – there’s some swearing, though less than in most Scottish crime fiction, and bits of it, especially relating to the office politics, triggered my over-sensitive credibility monitor. Also, one of the problems of living in such a small country is that all our successful people tend to know each other, and it was very obvious throughout that McDermid thinks of our First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, as a friend. There’s a little too much rather sycophantic praise of her and the Scottish Government in general for my taste – most of us, like the people in most democracies, have a rather higher level of healthy scepticism when it comes to our leaders.
But these were minor issues that didn’t spoil my absorption in the story. I loved wandering the streets of Edinburgh with Karen, travelling north with her, meeting up with her friends again, and seeing how Jason is maturing and growing in confidence in each book. I enjoyed Karen’s visit to Glasgow and McDermid’s tongue-in-cheek nods to the old rivalry between the citizens of Scotland’s two biggest cities. The pacing is excellent so that, although it’s a longish read, I never found it dragging. The main storyline of the murder is intriguing, with parts of it going back to the war, though most of the book is firmly set in the present day. I even learned a small piece of Scotland’s history I didn’t know before. Third person, past tense, of course, as all the best books are.
It would work fine as a standalone. I have read a couple of these out of order and actually missed one or two of the earlier ones, but I haven’t felt that’s left me struggling in any way. In short, highly recommended – I hope McDermid sticks with this series for a long time to come.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Little, Brown Book Group.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
DCI Karen Pirie of Police Scotland’s Historic Cases Unit is in the middle of re-investigating a series of rapes when she is diverted to a crime scene in the Highlands. A woman and her husband are on a kind of treasure hunt, looking for something that the woman’s grandfather buried in a peat bog long ago. They find the spot, but when they dig down into the peat, they are shocked to discover not only the looted items but the body of a man, almost perfectly preserved. The body only dates back to the 1990s, though, so Karen must unravel the mystery of who killed the man and why. And Karen also finds herself involved almost by accident in the investigation of another crime, one that she hoped she’d prevented. Meantime her new boss has given her an extra team member, a thing Karen would be grateful for if only she felt there wasn’t an ulterior motive behind it...
I’m thoroughly enjoying the Karen Pirie books and this is another excellent addition to the series. Now that a national police force has taken the place of the old regional forces in Scotland in real life, it gives fiction writers the ability to have their detectives travel all over the country, and McDermid is as comfortable writing about the Highlands as she is her hometown of Edinburgh. I’m biased, I know, but I love that McDermid has set this series back in Scotland after too long away. She gives an amazingly good sense of place and a wholly authentic feel to contemporary Scottish life. Forget the unrealistic gun-totin’ gang wars of so much “Tartan Noir” or the tartan twee of the cosier side of Scottish crime fiction (usually written by nostalgic Canadians or Americans). This is modern Scotland: warts and all, for sure, but also with a vibrant, well educated population and a professional police force where dysfunctional drunken mavericks wouldn’t be tolerated.
This falls very much under the category of police procedural rather than mystery or thriller. Karen and her team identify their suspect fairly early on and most of the book is about how they go about finding the evidence to make a case that would stand up in court. It’s an intriguing and realistic look at how policing is done, but could perhaps be a little dull in the wrong hands. McDermid, however spices the whole thing up by having the HCU working on other cases alongside the main one, by throwing in some office politics, and by having some great characterisation of Karen herself, her young sidekick Jason, her friends and colleagues, not to mention the suspects and witnesses they deal with along the way. Karen is well into recovery from her grief now (deliberately vague, in case people haven’t read the earlier books) and McDermid has handled that whole storyline superbly, I feel – never letting it be forgotten or glossed over, but not making either Karen or the reader wallow endlessly.
Downsides – there’s some swearing, though less than in most Scottish crime fiction, and bits of it, especially relating to the office politics, triggered my over-sensitive credibility monitor. Also, one of the problems of living in such a small country is that all our successful people tend to know each other, and it was very obvious throughout that McDermid thinks of our First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, as a friend. There’s a little too much rather sycophantic praise of her and the Scottish Government in general for my taste – most of us, like the people in most democracies, have a rather higher level of healthy scepticism when it comes to our leaders.
But these were minor issues that didn’t spoil my absorption in the story. I loved wandering the streets of Edinburgh with Karen, travelling north with her, meeting up with her friends again, and seeing how Jason is maturing and growing in confidence in each book. I enjoyed Karen’s visit to Glasgow and McDermid’s tongue-in-cheek nods to the old rivalry between the citizens of Scotland’s two biggest cities. The pacing is excellent so that, although it’s a longish read, I never found it dragging. The main storyline of the murder is intriguing, with parts of it going back to the war, though most of the book is firmly set in the present day. I even learned a small piece of Scotland’s history I didn’t know before. Third person, past tense, of course, as all the best books are.
It would work fine as a standalone. I have read a couple of these out of order and actually missed one or two of the earlier ones, but I haven’t felt that’s left me struggling in any way. In short, highly recommended – I hope McDermid sticks with this series for a long time to come.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Little, Brown Book Group.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
A proper old fashioned whodunnit type mystery. The tough lead and simple but good hearted side kick drive the story. Additional characters season the plot peripherally. There’s the odd spot of over adjectived prose. Strange that insomnia has become the plaudable fault for our heroes: womanising and heavy drinking perhaps less socially acceptable now.
2.5 stars so the ending was written as if the author just decided i’m done and was. very unsatisfying. the rest of the book was rather mediocre.
McDermid returns to Karen Pirie in Broken Ground. Now that she’s blown up Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, Pirie seems to be her current favourite character; the only problem with this is that while the books are more than workable, Pirie is motivated by the death of her boyfriend, who is incredibly difficult to remember.
Broken Ground terminates in a massive rush, resolving itself while leaving its threads slightly frayed. Written in a thick Scottish burr, Broken Ground is fine enough work but not among McDermid’s best.
Broken Ground terminates in a massive rush, resolving itself while leaving its threads slightly frayed. Written in a thick Scottish burr, Broken Ground is fine enough work but not among McDermid’s best.