Reviewing: A Darker Domain by Val McDermid

Book in review: A Darker Domain by Val McDermid

The voice is soft like the darkness that encloses them. “You ready” “as ready as I’ll ever be.”

Set in Scotland, Val McDermid’s brilliant exploration of loyalty and greed intertwines the past and present in a novel that was chosen as a New York Times Notable Crime Book of the Year and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

---------------

Twenty-five years ago, the daughter of the richest man in Scotland and her baby son were kidnapped and held for 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 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?

------------------

What did I like about this reading?

This is a debut novel that is thrilling, charming and very dark as it is compelling with a plot that moves at breakneck speed…full of action, betrayal and romance; yet the ending did not climax and it was expected because of the way the two investigation were being led…bits and pieces here and there with a large cast of characters and the dates and places worked liked a police blotter…going back and forth between the case of kidnapping and a miners strike; who killed whom and for what and since no resolve could be made; DNA samples were needed to find out who is related to whom; a confusing read for me because of so many characters; they seem to just appear and to not be heard from again.

This story might have worked best were it not written like police blots; but told straightly or not.

I had to read another reviewer’s review of this book as this helped me to understand something more.