Detective Karen Pirie

OThe first novel in the bestselling Karen Pirie series The award-winning Number One bestseller and Queen of crime fiction Val McDermid carves out a stunning psychological thriller. The past is behind them, but what’s still to come will tear them apart… Some things just won’t let go. The...

This "cunningly plotted" (New York Times) thriller is now on Britbox as Karen Pirie! Bestselling, award-winning author Val McDermid delivers her most stunning story yet in The Distant Echo--an intricate, thought-provoking tale of murder and revenge. Four in the morning, mid-December, and snow...

The second riveting crime novel in the Karen Pirie series, from No.1 Sunday Times bestseller Val McDermid. Twenty-five years ago, a woman and her baby son were kidnapped and held to ransom. Catriona Grant ended up dead and little Adam's fate has remained a mystery ever since. When a new clue is...

Karen Pirie is the newly appointed Deputy Inspector of the Cold Case Unit, and her first investigation takes her 25 years into the past to the national miners’ strike. At the time, a kidnapping gone wrong left a small boy missing, but new evidence suggests he might still be alive. As Pirie delves deeper, she realizes the boy’s disapperance may be linked to another cold case involving a missing miner.

In the center of historic Edinburgh, builders are preparing to convert a disused Victorian Gothic building into luxury flats. They are understandably surprised to find skeletal remains hidden in a high pinnacle that hasn't been touched by maintenance for years. But who do the bones belong to, and how did they get there? Could the eccentric British pastime of free climbing the outside of buildings play a role? Enter cold case detective Karen Pirie, who gets to work trying to establish the corpse's identity.

The third book in the Karen Pirie series, from No. 1 bestselling author Val McDermid. When a skeleton is discovered hidden at the top of a crumbling, gothic building in Edinburgh, Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie is faced with the unenviable task of identifying the bones. As Karen's...

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 22 years before. Finding the answer to the cold case should be straightforward. But it's as twisted as the DNA helix itself. 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.

The fourth thrilling novel in the DCI Karen Pirie series. 'There are lots of things that ran in families, but murder wasn't one of them . . .' When a teenage joyrider crashes a stolen car and ends up in a coma, a routine DNA test could be the key to unlocking the mystery of a twenty-year-old...

The fifth thrilling novel in the DCI Karen Pirie series. 'Somebody has been here before us. And he's still here . . .' When a body is discovered in the remote depths of the Highlands, DCI Karen Pirie finds herself in the right place at the right time. Unearthed with someone's long-buried...

In Broken Ground, cold-case Detective Karen Pirie faces her hardest challenge yet. Six feet under in a Highland peat bog lies Alice Somerville’s inheritance, buried by her grandfather at the end of World War II. But when Alice finally uncovers it, she finds an unwanted surprise - a body with a bullet hole between the eyes. Meanwhile, DCI Pirie is called in to unravel a case where nothing is quite as it seems. And as she gets closer to the truth, it becomes clear that not everyone shares her desire for justice. Or even the idea of what justice is.

When a lobster fisherman on an early morning run pulls in his traps, he finds something he wasn't expecting to catch - a body. When police discover the dead man was the brother of a senior Scottish government official who vanished without a trace, Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie takes over the investigation. At the same time, a woman in the wealthy enclave of Perth is clearing out her sister's home after a fatal road accident and finds a mysterious camper van in the garage containing a skeletonized body. But who is it?

THE TIMES AUDIOBOOK OF THE WEEK The bodies never stay buried forever . . .' On a freezing winter morning, fishermen pull a body from the sea. It is quickly discovered that the dead man was the prime suspect in a decade-old investigation, when a prominent civil servant disappeared without trace...

It’s April 2020 and Edinburgh is in lockdown, but that doesn’t mean crime takes a holiday. It would seem like a strange time for a cold case to go hot—the streets all but empty, an hour’s outdoor exercise the maximum allowed—but when a source at the National Library contacts DCI Karen Pirie’s team about documents in the archive of a recently deceased crime novelist, it seems it’s game on again. What unspools is a twisted game of betrayal and revenge, but no one quite expects how many twists it will turn out to have.

THE HEART-POUNDING NEW BOOK IN THE KAREN PIRIE SERIES, NOW A MAJOR ITV SERIES STARRING LAUREN LYLE __________ Edinburgh, haunted by the ghosts of its many writers, is also the cold case beat of DCI Karen Pirie. So she shouldn't be surprised when an author's manuscript appears to be a blueprint...

It’s April 2020 and Edinburgh is in lockdown, but that doesn’t mean crime takes a holiday. It would seem like a strange time for a cold case to go hot—the streets all but empty, an hour’s outdoor exercise the maximum allowed—but when a source at the National Library contacts DCI Karen Pirie’s team about documents in the archive of a recently deceased crime novelist, it seems it’s game on again. What unspools is a twisted game of betrayal and revenge, but no one quite expects how many twists it will turn out to have.

THE HEART-POUNDING NEW NOVEL IN THE KAREN PIRIE SERIES, NOW A MAJOR ITV SERIES STARRING LAUREN LYLE __________ Edinburgh, haunted by the ghosts of its many writers, is also the cold case beat of DCI Karen Pirie. So she shouldn't be surprised when an author's manuscript appears to be a blueprint...

THE POWERFUL NEW THRILLER IN THE KAREN PIRIE SERIES, NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES 'Beautifully structured, witty and twisty' ANN CLEEVES 'A perfect crime novel' KATE MOSSE 'Powerful, moving and wise' HARLAN COBEN 'Full of humour, heart and trademark twists' CHRIS WHITAKER ____________ The truth is...

The new installment in the “relentlessly engrossing series” (The Wall Street Journal) finds Karen Pirie and her team investigating the murder of a journalist paved under a motorway—but was it his work or his private life that put him there? Scotland, 2025. When torrential winter rain...