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thebookishalibi 's review for:
Past Lying
by Val McDermid
It was so good to meet Karen Pirie again and as usual, Val McDermid gives the reader a layered mystery with heart. This case begins in April 2020, just as the lockdown in Scotland is beginning. Karen is a mirror for all of the uncertainty and fear at the time which was somehow both validating and very unsettling as a reader. (If you aren’t quite ready to revisit 2020, I suggest you set this book aside for another time.)
Karen and her team use their time in lockdown to investigate the unsolved disappearance of a young woman from a year earlier. It’s not a cold case but just a case that’s sort of been unattended. The evidence? Well, it’s all in an unpublished manuscript left behind when a famous crime writer dies.
The plot is very meta - with a crime book tucked into a crime book, and there’s quite a lot to follow. The players are all authors, both fictional and actual, which feels playful and is a treat to readers. I really enjoyed that so much of this mystery is set against a backdrop of the literary world.
The whodunnit of it all is predictable, particularly for readers well acquainted with this genre, but it’s okay. There is more telling than showing when it comes to the team connecting evidence and proposing theories, and it feels a rushed at the end. This version of Karen is very flat, which is understandable given what the world felt like in April 2020 and her grief, but I missed her. The connection between Karen and her sergeant Daisy is a good one, and engages the reader when the plot feels otherwise thin. There are some excursions from the central investigation that seem unnecessary but actually create context for what Karen is experiencing during such an uncertain time.
Is it Karen’s very best outing? No. But who among us was at our best in April 2020 when things went to pieces? I’d recommend it gladly.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC. These are my entirely honest opinions of the book.
Karen and her team use their time in lockdown to investigate the unsolved disappearance of a young woman from a year earlier. It’s not a cold case but just a case that’s sort of been unattended. The evidence? Well, it’s all in an unpublished manuscript left behind when a famous crime writer dies.
The plot is very meta - with a crime book tucked into a crime book, and there’s quite a lot to follow. The players are all authors, both fictional and actual, which feels playful and is a treat to readers. I really enjoyed that so much of this mystery is set against a backdrop of the literary world.
The whodunnit of it all is predictable, particularly for readers well acquainted with this genre, but it’s okay. There is more telling than showing when it comes to the team connecting evidence and proposing theories, and it feels a rushed at the end. This version of Karen is very flat, which is understandable given what the world felt like in April 2020 and her grief, but I missed her. The connection between Karen and her sergeant Daisy is a good one, and engages the reader when the plot feels otherwise thin. There are some excursions from the central investigation that seem unnecessary but actually create context for what Karen is experiencing during such an uncertain time.
Is it Karen’s very best outing? No. But who among us was at our best in April 2020 when things went to pieces? I’d recommend it gladly.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC. These are my entirely honest opinions of the book.