The Distant Echo (Hardcover)

Val McDermid's The Distant Echo is, even more so than with her previous work, a masterpiece of trickery and misdirection. In 1978, four male students find the body of Rosie Duff half-buried in the snow and their lives are variously damaged by the suspicion that falls on them when the murder is never solved; a quarter of a century later, the case is reopened and suddenly the quartet start to be killed one after the other.

This is an effective thriller because it is so intelligent about the ways in which time changes things--secrets that seemed important become trivial and investigative techniques become ever more accurate. It is also intelligent about the ways in which things do not change--the friendships of the four men persist even when one becomes a fundamentalist preacher and another a post-modern literary theorist. Unusually for McDermid, this is a very Scots book as well--the investigating officers Maclennan and Lawson are very much men of a particular time and place. McDermid has a real sense of how to make forensic details count in a murder story--she also, more importantly, has a heart--this is a novel that makes us care passionately about victims and suspects alike. --Roz Kaveney

'There is no one in contemporary crime fiction who has managed to combine the visceral and the humane as well as Val McDermid ... She's the best we've got' New York Times 'The plotting is impeccable, the atmosphere palpable, and I doubt that it will be surpassed this year' Graham Caveney, Sunday Express 'McDermid has become our leading pathologist of everyday evil, and she both thrills and scares in this tale of celebrity stalking with a difference ... The subtle orchestration of terror is masterful' Maxim Jakubowski, Guardian

Val McDermid's skills as a crime writer are matched by her versatility: she has been responsible for three separate series of novels as well as several stand-alone titles. Her most enduring characters are Manchester-based private eye Kate Brannigan and crime profiler Tony Hill. But while the gritty realism of these books has long been her calling card, McDermid's more recent work has shown a greater degree of psychological penetration and The Distant Echo is possibly her most ambitious and sustained achievement yet. When a group of students discover the body of a young woman after leaving a party, they little realize that they will soon become the principal suspects in the murder and rape of the victim, Rosie Duff. 25 years pass, and Fife police reinvestigate the crime - but someone other than the Police Department is employing unorthodox methods to exact their own concept of justice, and one of the original group of suspects dies in a house fire which may not have been accidental. Then a second suspect dies in a bungled burglary. Alex Gilbey, one of the original group, realizes he may well be next in line, and the only way to save his life may be to discover who actually killed Rosie Duff all those years ago. Writers such as Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell have done their best work when concentrating on someone at the centre of a crime rather than a series detective, and that is precisely the case here. Throughout the novel's considerable length, McDermid effortlessly delineates the growing tension and mental malaise that grips the central characters. But perhaps its most masterful aspect is the fashion in which the author combines psychological acuity with a tautly realized narrative, to gripping effect. (Kirkus UK)

New forensic breakthroughs reopen a 25-year-old cold case. In the meantime, most of the forensic evidence has disappeared from the Fife storage lockup, and two of the four principal suspects have moved to the States. Still, Assistant Chief Constable James Lawson, who was a young copper patrolling the snowbound streets that December night, seems determined to prove the young students who fell over the body of pretty barmaid Rosie Duff on their drunken way home really did rape and kill her. These days, Ziggy is a much-admired gay pediatrician in Seattle; Tom is a born-again Christian proselytizing in the South; Mondo is a snobbish literature professor in Glasgow; and Alex, married to Mondo's sister Lynn, manufactures greeting cards in Edinburgh. But Rosie's two brothers haven't forgotten or forgiven, and her illegitimate son Graham is skulking about with vengeance in mind. All of them are spurring on Lawson, who seems to be making no headway on the case. Then, suddenly, Ziggy dies in an arson fire, Mondo becomes an intruder's victim, Tom is waylaid while visiting Alex, and Alex's new baby is abducted at a petrol station. Mere coincidence, says Lawson, but a chip of paint will prove him wrong. McDermid, putting aside her fondness for serial killers (The Last Temptation, 2002, etc.), masterfully presents the 1978 portion of her story but stumbles so badly with melodramatic present-tense plot quirks that readers will be well ahead of Lawson in naming Rosie's killer. (Kirkus Reviews)