Book description
Val McDermid, creator of TV's Wire in the Blood, mixes fact with
fiction, dealing with one of the most important and symbolic moments in
recent history.
Twenty-five years ago, the daughter of the richest man in Scotland and
her baby son were kidnapped and held to ransom. But Catriona Grant ended
up dead and little Adam's fate has remained a mystery ever since. When a
new clue is discovered in a deserted Tuscan villa - along with grisly
evidence of a recent murder - cold case expert DI Karen Pirie is
assigned to follow the trail.
She's already working a case from the same year. During the Miners'
Strike of 1984, pit worker Mick Prentice vanished. He was presumed to
have broken ranks and fled south with other 'scabs'… but Karen finds
that the reported events of that night don't add up. Where did he really
go? And is there a link to the Grant mystery?
The truth is stranger - and far darker - than fiction. 'An absorbing
novel, one of her best' The Times
'Val McDermid is a born storyteller… absorbing reading' Sunday Telegraph
'A searing piece … McDermid orchestrates the tension with authority…
After reading McDermid's novel, readers may wish that more crime fiction
would have the guts to take on serious issues' Express
'Torture, warped psyches, unspeakable cellars: Val McDermid sends you
to bed with lights blazing' Sunday Times
'One of the best modern writers of crime fiction … Excellent' Scotland
on Sunday Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community then
read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending
the last three years as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday
tabloid. Now a full-time writer, she divides her time between Cheshire
and Northumberland. Her novels have won international acclaim and a
number of prestigious awards, including the Gold Dagger for best crime
novel of the year, the Anthony Award for best novel, and the Los Angeles
Times Book of the Year Award. Her thriller series featuring criminal
profiler Tony Hill has been adapted into the much-loved TV series Wire
in the Blood.
