Still Life: The heart-pounding number one bestseller from the Queen of Crime

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Still Life shows that she is still at the height of her powers; it is deeply enjoyable, one of her best. When a family secret about Granny is revealed, we discover all about her fiercesome pirate reputation and her swashbuckling ways – from making other rogueish pirates walk the plank to singing sea shanties to her dog, Jolly Roger. five judges will meet in a secret location here to decide the winner of the Man Booker Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards. Meanwhile, the man responsible for the death of the love of her life is being released from prison, reopening old wounds just as she was getting back on her feet.

She is Visiting Professor in the Centre of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand. She juggles them beautifully, and you don’t find yourself wishing she would leave one case and get back to the other.

McDermid was signing books, and a woman asked her to autograph a Top of the Pops annual which contained a picture of the disgraced late TV presenter Jimmy Savile. Missing people, murdered people, art theft, identity theft, more missing people and alongside that there is the troubled relationship of Karen and Hamish. Daisy is a graduate and, fortunately since the case will take them to Paris, a fluent French speaker; Jason is as eager, likeable and loyal as a spaniel puppy. She was due to come back to our fair city last year, and then this year, but Covid ruins everything.

The number one bestseller and unrivalled queen of crime Val McDermid is back with her most exhilarating, breath-taking thriller yet. This investigation takes place in the last weeks of February 2020, just as the Covid-19 pandemic kicks off, and ends on the eve of lockdown. As a long-time fan of her work, it was with eager anticipation, therefore, that I settled down with her latest of over 30 books, Still Life. Thanks to Netgalley, the author (Val McDermid), and the publisher (Atlantic Monthly Press) for a copy of the book.She is a magician in her tight plotting, extraordinary set up, clear prose and spot on characterization as DCI Karen Pirie of Edinburgh's Historic Cases Unit (cold case) works to solve two greatly dissimilar, original jobs.

I can only hope there is more DCI Pirie to come, as this was surely one of the best police procedurals I have read in a long while. This doubtless is why some good crime novelists today, Andrew Taylor for example, have turned away from the contemporary scene. McDermid has stated that Jacko Vance, a TV celebrity with a secret lust for torture, murder and under-age girls, who was featured in the Wire in the Blood and two later books, is based on her direct personal experience of interviewing Jimmy Savile.Due to the impending virus, the ending is dark, but the idea of Karen’s determination to survive left me feeling hopeful. In addition to writing novels, McDermid contributes to several British newspapers and often broadcasts on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland.

A skeleton has been discovered in an abandoned campervan and all clues point to a killer who never faced justice – a killer who is still out there. In August 2022 McDermid reported that the estate of Agatha Christie had threatened her publishers with legal action if they referred to McDermid as "the Queen of Crime", stating that the term was copyrighted by the Christie estate. All these bubble along convincingly below the surface as Pirie races to try and solve the twin mysteries of the skeleton in the van and the body pulled from the sea. She also attaches great importance to the archaic and bureaucratic echelons in the force in the sense that everyone below her are plods, and those above are there because of political reasons.

Pirie is re-assigned to the body in the sea case by Assistant Chief Constable Anne Markie, one of the few characters that didn’t ring true to me. Of course, Chandler was never much good at plotting, and one usually forgives him because there is so much else that is good. Tamsin then chivvies her colleagues to go the extra mile, which puts Pirie's cases on the fast track. I think it's been a long time since I read a book so solidly set in the realities of conducting an investigation in Europe in the era of the European Union.