Lethal lockdown

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This article was published 20/01/2024 (695 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Scottish national librarian is going so squirrelly with inactivity during the initial COVID-19 lockdown in April 2020 that she begins to read The Vanishing of Laurel Oliver, an unfinished manuscript from the archived papers of disgraced mystery writer Jake Stein, who died suddenly — and suspects he might have been a real murderer.

And as luck and the plot would have it, she’d kept the number from a previous case of the equally at-loose-ends D.C. Jason (The Mint) Murray of the Historical Crimes Unit in Edinburgh, and drops a dime (or, more accurately, a sixpence).

We’re off in Past Lying, by far the best murder mystery Val McDermid has written in a very long time.

The HCU is headed by McDermid’s most endearing and enduring character, Det. chief Insp. Karen Pirie, herself bored out of her skull by the pandemic restrictions, which limit Scots to one hour outdoors a day for exercise and keep the coppers stuck inside or working from home for all but compelling criminal cases.

Pirie is in a bubble with her annoyingly nerdy sidekick, Det. Sgt. Daisy Mortimer, using the spiffy but empty flat of Pirie’s erstwhile romantic partner Hamish. He’s the supposedly hermit-like highlands crofter Pirie met while investigating buried human remains; Hamish, in fact, turned out to be a university-educated entrepreneur running a string of hipster cafés in the city.

Hamish is hunkered down in the remote glens, where he’s padding his fortune by pumping out hand sanitizer in a distillery.

On to our plot, and Val, you’ve conjured up a doozy.

A year prior, young Lara Hardie told fellow students she was going to the library and disappeared without a trace.

Jake died of an aneurysm after watching his career tank when a woman said he had tortured and humiliated (but not murdered) her the exact way he’d depicted in a previous book. (Yes, that’s a book within a book within a book, for those keeping score at home).

Meanwhile, Jake learned his wife was having an affair with Ross, a young murder mystery author Jake had befriended and had over for chess and whisky every couple of weeks, that young author having soon found success that far surpassed his scoundrel of a mentor.

So, the manuscript posits, revenge will be sweet — let’s see if Jake can carry out the perfect murder. He’ll lure a young student, murder her and plant her body and other overwhelming evidence in his cuckolder’s home.

Pirie’s boss despises her and scoffs at the lunatic suggestion the dead author may have done this in real life, but it doesn’t stop Karen and team from trying to ferret out if they can identify anyone in the book-within-a-book they can connect to Jake, Ross and Lara.

Still with us?

Many recent murder mysteries have ignored COVID-19 or assume the worst has passed when they set their story, but Pirie and her pals face the pandemic head on at its earliest days when there was no vaccine and no one really knew what it was and how it was transmitted.

They have to obey the rules. People get sick, people close to major characters start coughing and some people die. Witnesses cannot readily be interviewed unless they’re willing to meet outside and space themselves appropriately.

Meanwhile, Pirie starts to have her doubts about what type of person Hamish really is, Jason fears for his family and Daisy tries to sort out (by Zoom) a relationship that started just before the lockdown.

And those Syrian refugees Pirie helped a few books back? Their café is closed, like almost everything else, but they ask Karen to help a refugee Syrian doctor whose wife and child the regime killed and who, even in the pandemic, could be stalked by assassins in Edinburgh because of smuggled-out proof of genocide.

McDermid has written three dozen murder mysteries. She’s written herself into a corner with the Carol Jordan and Tony Hill series, and her Allie Burns newspaper novels push credulity a tad far.

This is the seventh Karen Pirie novel and it’s beyond terrific. Just try to follow it without picturing the actors on the brilliant Britbox TV series. McDermid doesn’t hand you anything on a platter, you have to work for it — the book within a book requires the skill of a reader who can follow Antony Horowitz.

And that’s outstanding company.

Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin is even more determined to visit Edinburgh again after hearing about all the nightly walks Karen Pirie takes throughout the ancient streets. And these days the pubs are open.