(2009) Pretty good Scottish based mystery. Read this after seeing BritBox series ?Karen Pirie? Pirie has been newly promoted to the cold case department of the local police. Two cases are brought to her, a missing person from 20 years ago and a search for the kidnapped son of a prominent business man's daughter. Seemingly not related, of course they come together and the missing grandson turns out to be the son of the missing man's wife. Karen is not in the book enough for my taste. McDermid spends more than half of the book inside the heads of witnesses, criminals and victims. Still, the parts where Pirie is involved are witty and well worth the read. Publishers' Weekly: When Michelle Gibson reports her father, Mick Prentice, missing at the start of McDermid's intricate but underwhelming stand-alone psychological thriller, Det. Insp. Karen Pirie, head of the Fife police Cold Case Review Team, isn't interested until Michelle reveals that Mick disappeared during the 1984 miners' strike. At the time, everyone believed Mick went ?scabbing? in Nottingham. Later, Karen is summoned to the home of wealthy Sir Broderick Maclennan Grant, whose daughter, Catriona, and baby grandson, Adam, were abducted in 1985. A botched ransom hand-off left Catriona dead and Adam nowhere to be found. New evidence linked to the kidnapping has surfaced, and now Karen has two missing people to locate. McDermid tries to pack too much story into one book, and the connection she draws between the cases feels forced.

Wow this one fantastic is a great series so far. The book was essentially 2 cold cases from 20 years ago, but both had recent developments take place.
How each story develops and the history of what was happening when the original crimes took place was fascinating and very well laid out.
This author really knows how to lay out a mystery. ( )

A Darker domain is a psychological thriller by Val McDermid. This is the second book that features Detective Inspector Karen Pirie of the Fife police department. The plot flashes back and forth in time from the current time of 2007 and back to 1984 and the time of the miner’s strike.

DI Pirie is investigating two cold case crimes from 1984, one is the disappearance of a miner and the other involved the kidnapping of a powerful and wealthy man’s daughter and grandson. The miner had been thought to have started a new life in Nottingham, but no trace of him can be found. The kidnap case ended badly with the daughter being killed, but the baby grandson has never been accounted for. New clues have come to light that turn their attention to Italy. DI Pirie has her hands tied in many ways, from budgets, to a superior who doesn’t like or understand her but mostly by the grandfather of the missing child. He not only wanted total control over the case, he also wanted to be the one to decide what the police were to be told.

A Darker Domain was an excellent read. The characters are well drawn and the plot was intricate. Val McDermid is well known for her superb writing, and in this book, she uses the backstories to fill in the details, explain the motives and move the story along. The linking of the two crimes was done in a way that felt realistic and the final resolution really highlighted how the rich and powerful are given privileges that ordinary people aren’t offered. ( )

Fife, Escocia, 1985. La heredera Catriona MacIeann Grant y su hijo son secuestrados. El pago del rescate sale terriblemente mal y Gran muere. Su hijo desaparece sin dejar rastro hasta 2008, cuando un turista en la Toscana se topa con nuevas pruebas dramáticas que reabren la investigación.
Fife, 1984. En el apogeo de la huelga nacional de mineros políticamente cargada, Mick Prentice abandona a su familia para unirse a los rompehuelgas del sur. Etiquetado como una costra de pierna negra, está casi muerto en lo que respecta a sus amigos y familiares. Veintitrés años después, una joven entra en una comisaría para denunciar la desaparición de Mick Prentice. La detective Karen Pirie, jefa del equipo de investigación de casos sin resolver, quiere saber por qué ha tardado tanto en darse cuenta.
Para Pirie, ya inmersa en la investigación de Prentice, una segunda incursión en una investigación de la década de 1980 que se enfrió, esta vez, el secuestro de Grant, ofrece la oportunidad de dejar su huella. Pero es seguro que tendrá un precio extremadamente alto. Mientras trabaja para desentrañar estos misterios, dos décadas de secretos llevarán a Karen Pirie a un oscuro dominio de violencia y traición, más oscuro que cualquiera que haya conocido hasta ahora.

In this cold-case mystery McDermid describes not just a time and place, but a social and economic crisis that ultimately changed the character of that place permanently. A masterful job of plotting and character development. ( )