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A review by lgpiper
Broken Ground by Val McDermid
4.0
I have no idea how this came to be on my kindle. But it was in the group of the last half dozen downloaded books. Looking through my messages from Amazon, it wasn't on any of them. So, it just appeared magically...or else I did snag it for some strange reason and, due to my developing a "mature" brain, I forgot.
Well, it seems I downloaded it from Netgalley back at the end of July. Who knew? So how did it end up grouped with December downloads? Whatever, I decided to read it and am glad I did.
It would have been even better, of course, had the folks at NetGalley bothered with a bit of formatting. It's not that difficult to produce a decent EBook these days, but the formatting was so amateurish that I think it might have been done by a beginning student just learning the ropes of InDesign, or Quark, or whatever publishers use these days. Clearly not one of the better students in the class, just someone filling space because his mother made him or her do so. It's not that difficult. I took one of those classes and made both print and EBooks.
Whatever, we are up in Scotland with Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie and her faithful, if not all that competent, sidekick, Detective Constable Jason Murray, also known at "The Mint". They work in the HCU, or "Historical Cases Unit". That is, they investigate things long unsolved in the light of recent information.
So, it seems that a couple, Alice and Will Somerville have heard a story from Alice's grandfather about a pair of vintage Indian motorcycles that were buried in a bog in 1946. They have a crude map, and with the help of a local crofter (who is also rather a stud and runs a chain of coffee shops), Hamish Mackenzie, manage to decode the crude map they have and go to dig up the motorcycles, and thereby, retrieve some of Alice's "inheritance". Well, it turns out that there's a body in one of the holes along with the motorcycle. But, the strange thing is, the body can't have been there for more than about 20 or so years. Thus we have a case for the HCU.
There are, of course many complications. Karen's boss, ACC Ann Markie (aka "The Dog Biscuit") has embedded one of her minions, Detective Sergeant Gerry McCartney, into the HCU to keep track of Karen Pirie's doings. It seems that Karen doesn't always go by the book even though she is generally successful, and The Dog Biscuit wants some dirt on Karen so as to remove her and retain greater glory for herself, or something.
There's also the complication that Karen finds herself attracted to the crofter, Hamish, although she's not sure he's to be trusted. Then too, Karen overhears two women talking in a coffee shop about the husband of one of them. They way they're talking, it sounds like one of them could get embroiled in some serious domestic violence. So Karen warns them. Naturally, one of the women along with the husband of the other woman get murdered. Thus, Karen is involved, even though she should not be: more grist for The Dog Biscuit's mill, so to speak.
The story line moved back and forth between events as they occurred in the past and events as DCI Pirrie worked to unfold the history. A rather interesting touch.
This book is the fifth in a series of books about DCI Karen Pirie, and I'm likely to check out a few of the earlier books. Actually, I've already placed a hold on the first in the series.
Well, it seems I downloaded it from Netgalley back at the end of July. Who knew? So how did it end up grouped with December downloads? Whatever, I decided to read it and am glad I did.
It would have been even better, of course, had the folks at NetGalley bothered with a bit of formatting. It's not that difficult to produce a decent EBook these days, but the formatting was so amateurish that I think it might have been done by a beginning student just learning the ropes of InDesign, or Quark, or whatever publishers use these days. Clearly not one of the better students in the class, just someone filling space because his mother made him or her do so. It's not that difficult. I took one of those classes and made both print and EBooks.
Whatever, we are up in Scotland with Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie and her faithful, if not all that competent, sidekick, Detective Constable Jason Murray, also known at "The Mint". They work in the HCU, or "Historical Cases Unit". That is, they investigate things long unsolved in the light of recent information.
So, it seems that a couple, Alice and Will Somerville have heard a story from Alice's grandfather about a pair of vintage Indian motorcycles that were buried in a bog in 1946. They have a crude map, and with the help of a local crofter (who is also rather a stud and runs a chain of coffee shops), Hamish Mackenzie, manage to decode the crude map they have and go to dig up the motorcycles, and thereby, retrieve some of Alice's "inheritance". Well, it turns out that there's a body in one of the holes along with the motorcycle. But, the strange thing is, the body can't have been there for more than about 20 or so years. Thus we have a case for the HCU.
There are, of course many complications. Karen's boss, ACC Ann Markie (aka "The Dog Biscuit") has embedded one of her minions, Detective Sergeant Gerry McCartney, into the HCU to keep track of Karen Pirie's doings. It seems that Karen doesn't always go by the book even though she is generally successful, and The Dog Biscuit wants some dirt on Karen so as to remove her and retain greater glory for herself, or something.
There's also the complication that Karen finds herself attracted to the crofter, Hamish, although she's not sure he's to be trusted. Then too, Karen overhears two women talking in a coffee shop about the husband of one of them. They way they're talking, it sounds like one of them could get embroiled in some serious domestic violence. So Karen warns them. Naturally, one of the women along with the husband of the other woman get murdered. Thus, Karen is involved, even though she should not be: more grist for The Dog Biscuit's mill, so to speak.
The story line moved back and forth between events as they occurred in the past and events as DCI Pirrie worked to unfold the history. A rather interesting touch.
This book is the fifth in a series of books about DCI Karen Pirie, and I'm likely to check out a few of the earlier books. Actually, I've already placed a hold on the first in the series.