I personally really enjoyed Out of Bounds. It is a gripping book that chilled me however when I begun to think about how deceptive people really can be – fiction or otherwise.

When a teenage drunk driver is found to share familial DNA with a rapist twenty years in the past DCI Karen Pirie from the Historic Cases Unit is called upon to hunt down the murderer and give the rape victim’s family some closure. While she and her young assistant DC Jason Murray hunt down leads in what turns out to be a less than clear cut investigation, Pirie is pulled into another case which involves a possible suicide of a young man with links to another cold case from the past. This is Val McDermid's thirtieth novel and the first one I have read. Out of Bounds is the fourth book in a series featuring DCI Karen Pirie but can easily be read as a standalone police procedural.That was part of the point. She had chosen to move to Edinburgh precisely because it was unfamiliar. Deciding to live here had felt like a project. Learning the city one street at a time might take her mind off the grief and the pain. a b Wroe, Nicholas (12 August 2011). "Val McDermid: a life in writing". The Guardian . Retrieved 29 May 2019.

I loved the authenticity of the police work and hierarchy within this novel. The process and forensics fascinated me and reminded me of a few real life cases I had read about in University involving familial DNA. Awesome! The Historic Crime Unit / cold cases interest me too, so learning that this was the focus of this book…well I just may have Eeeeeek’d!! The Hook - Val McDermid is one of my adopted authors at my hometown public library. I really love the stand-alones and non-fiction McDermid writes but have dipped in and out of her series for years. McDermid is an outstanding author who may just be the Queen of Crime after having lost Ruth Rendell and P.D. James. The High Heid Yin's New Claes, published in The Itchy Coo Book o Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales in Scots (2020) Pensioner in court over vendetta with crime writer Val McDermid". The Northern Echo. 9 July 2013 . Retrieved 31 July 2013.The best recent thrillers – review roundup". the Guardian. 7 September 2021 . Retrieved 16 April 2022. I loved her relentlessness,her sheer determination to pursue lines that often saw her go off on tangents,only to be returned to where she'd started,once again. Karen Pirie is a Detective Inspector working in Edinburgh. She hails from Fife, still referred the Kingdom of Fife, which lies across the Firth of Forth from the capital city. Her bumbling assistant is the only other person in the Historic Cases Unit, in other words, the cold case division. In this novel, Karen is called in when the DNA of a teenage joyrider is a familial match to the DNA found in the rape and murder 20 years earlier of a young woman in Glasgow. Karen also gets involved in the case of a death that is initially judged a suicide. This is the case which seems out of bounds for the historic case unit. But Karen is like a dog with a bone and she won't let go of this one, much to the fury of her supervisor who constantly threatens to suspend her or worse. Karen doesn't stop with these two cases. She also encounters a group of Syrian refugees, and befriends them, while seeking to find a way to help. Aye. One of the officers attending, it was his first fatal RTA. I doubt he'll get much sleep for a wee while. Anyway, the thing is, the driver's still alive. He's in a coma, like, but he's still hanging in there.'

If that is not enough to juggle, she also makes the acquaintance of some Syrian refuges and involves herself in their adjustment. She is still coping with the death of her lover, another Scottish policeman. It's no wonder she has trouble sleeping. When a teenage joyrider crashes a stolen car and ends up in a coma, a routine DNA test reveals a connection to an unsolved murder from twenty-two years before. Finding the answer to the cold case should be straightforward. But it’s as twisted as the DNA helix itself. Ross Garvie,a teenage joy rider,critically ill in hospital,the only survivor of the horrific accident that saw his three mates die,seems to hold the key to their investigation. Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid review – 'Austen for the Facebook age' ". the Guardian. 26 March 2014 . Retrieved 16 April 2022. There's also a strand in the book about some of the Syrian refugees who have come to Scotland fleeing from the horrors in their own country. McDermid handles this very well, showing them not as potential terrorists, rapists, murderers or religious fanatics, but as normal people who have seen and experienced terrible things, but survived, and who now want to find a way to build new lives for themselves and their families in a safer place.A fatal car crash leads to information about a cold murder case in the fourth DCI Karen Pirie mystery. Macdonald, Stuart (25 October 2016). "Author Val McDermid gets married to long-term partner Jo Sharp". Daily Record. Anna Burnside (2 September 2016). "Straight-talking Val McDermid lifts lid on her latest novel and why she's the badass woman of the week". Daily Record . Retrieved 25 October 2016. Sally Rowena Munt (1994). Murder by the Book: Feminism and the Crime Novel. Routledge. p. 67. ISBN 0415109191. Inspector Karen Pirie is a well written character that gives lots of scope to the author to develop further. A very strong fiery intelligent woman who I would hate to be on the wrong side of and her boss knows exactly what I mean.

As the book opens, we find DCI Karen Pirie of the Historical Cases Unit still reeling from the recent loss of her partner. By day she buries herself in cold cases & spends her nights walking the streets of Edinburgh. Val McDermid: 'Even on a romantic holiday my thoughts turn to murrrder' ". the Guardian. 19 August 2017 . Retrieved 16 April 2022. An] engaging new novel . . . McDermid’s 30th novel offers fascinating insights into the ethical dilemmas thrown up by advances in forensic science” —Sunday Times (UK) Jason Murray – “The Mint” — awwww….I don’t have a maternal bone in my body, but this guy…I just wanted to mother him. He is the other half of the HCU ( a two person Unit) and is so trust-worthy it could end up being his down-fall. Karen works around his flaws, protects him while trying to teach him but I suspect there is only so far she will go…she may just need to shove him out of the nest and hope he learns to fly, not fall! Kudos, Madam McDermid for another wonderful novel. I hope you will keep writing Pirie novels. I am curious, since you have a number of successful series, if you will entertain a crossover at some point. Brilliant if you would consider it for us fans!

Internationally bestselling author Val McDermid is one of our finest crime writers, whose gripping, impeccably plotted novels have garnered millions of readers worldwide. In her latest, Out of Bounds, she delivers a riveting cold case novel featuring detective Karen Pirie. Raith Rovers ladies' first match since breakaway". BBC News. 6 February 2022 . Retrieved 28 June 2022. On 23 October 2016 McDermid married her partner of two years, Jo Sharp, a professor of geography at the University of Glasgow. [34] [35] Meanwhile, Karen finds herself irresistibly drawn to another mystery that she has no business investigating, a mystery that has its roots in a terrorist bombing two decades ago. And again, she finds that nothing is as it seems.