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

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Totaro, Paulo (21 August 2010). "Death becomes her". The Sydney Morning Herald . Retrieved 29 May 2019. a b Coreena Ford (29 December 2012). "Author Val McDermid assaulted at Sunderland book signing". Journal Live . Retrieved 11 January 2012. McDermid is a radical feminist and socialist. [36] [29] She has incorporated feminism into some of her novels. [37] Works [ edit ] Lindsay Gordon series [ edit ] This book delves into two mysteries. Clues and witnesses have Karen traveling to Paris and Ireland. One case involves a dead body found in a van in a woman’s garage. The other is the murder of a man whose brother went missing 10 years ago. The cases are not connected, but both are easy to follow and are equally interesting.

Pirie has two assistants to help her investigate. Her trainee, Detective Constable Jason Murray (aka The Mint), helps with the skeleton case; I decided to turn my hand to writing a crime novel, because I’d always enjoyed reading the genre…” View more High drama… I'm an irregular reader of thrillers, but I do like diving into the genre, now and then. I've never read any of Val McDermid's work before, so why not start slap bang in the middle of a series! Minor criticisms aside, I can thoroughly recommend Still Life, and have no hesitation in hailing it as one of Val McDermid’s best yet. I suspect that Karen Pirie may well become one of her most important creations. With Karen already struggling on another case where a skeleton has been discovered in an abandoned camper van the pressure is on. Everything is pointing to a killer who was never arrested and still on the loose. Karen encounters a network of lies and secrets that must beMcDermid has been writing as a full time author since the success of her initial novels and she spends equal amounts of time in her homes in Edinburgh and Cheshire. She hails from the Kirkcaldy town of Fife in Scotland and completed her college studies from the St. Hilda’s College in Oxford. In this sixth book in the Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie series, the police investigate two cold cases. The book works fine as a standalone. Sally Rowena Munt (1994). Murder by the Book: Feminism and the Crime Novel. Routledge. p. 67. ISBN 0415109191.

Val McDermid is a very consistent writer. She provides much detail of the legal and police procedures that are important in her series and stand alone novels. Here, in “Still Life,” we find Karen Pirie again in her historical crimes unit. This time she is involved after the discovery of skeletonized remains in an old camper van in the garage of a woman who recently died in an accident. Strange case demanding a multi-pronged approach. Here is the combination of modern policing with old fashioned leg work. Val comes from Kirkcaldy, Fife, and read English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford (where she is now an Honorary Fellow). She was the first ever student from a state school in Scotland. Following graduation she became a journalist, and worked briefly as a dramatist. Although I've been a fan since the Karen Pirie series began, I have to confess to being a wee bit disappointed with this entry. The tone felt different from the earlier books, and I've been puzzling over why that's so. In her search for the truth, Karen uncovers a network of lies that has gone unchallenged for years. But lies and secrets can turn deadly when someone is determined to keep them hidden for good . . .The second case involves a skeleton found in a small camper in a dead woman's garage. Pirie must find out who the skeleton is and what happened. This turns out to be an interesting search that leads her staff into danger. The story that unfolds is so interesting that it's hard to put the book down. Ruth Lawson (13 December 2012). "Ink thrown at author Val McDermid during Sunderland book signing". Journal Live. Archived from the original on 8 April 2013 . Retrieved 26 December 2012.