A Darker Domain

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Val McDermid

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Pages: 400 (Paperback)

ISBN: 0007243316

Pub: Harper

Pub date: 2009-04-02

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 6289

Editorial Review:

1984. The National miners' strike is dividing the country, and in a struggling coal-mining town, the miners and their families are living at the edge of their resources. They have no money, and there is no food or heating. On the 14th of December, five miners break ranks to travel to Nottingham and work. For those who stay behind, this is an unforgivable betrayal, and the men are branded as scabs. 23 years later, a young woman is asking the police to trace her missing father: miner Mick Prentice vanished, never to be seen again, although money has been sent to his family; he was widely considered to be one of the scabs. Soon, D I Karen Pirie and DS Phil Parharta find themselves investigating a forgotten disappearance.

This is the provocative premise of Val McDermid's latest novel, A Darker Domain, and this utterly compelling book is further proof that McDermid is determined to stretch the parameters of what crime fiction is supposedly capable of. McDermid has always been prepared to freight serious issues into her work, and this novel -- which, in many ways, is an examination of the conditions that produced the Britain we live in today -- demonstrates the continuing high level of her ambition.

In fact, Karen Pirie, when taking on this new assignment, is already involved in a case of kidnapping that took place 22 years earlier (in which a woman was killed during a bungled handover of money). Journalist Bel Richmond makes a startling discovery concerning the MacLennan kidnapping while on holiday in Tuscany, and as the three protagonists dig deeper into ever-more labyrinthine mysteries, they are to make some remarkable discoveries -- discoveries which throw light not just on the crimes involved, but on the whole of British society.
As all of this might suggest, the stakes here are as high as one is likely to find in a crime novel, and Val McDermid demonstrates that she is as capable as ever of integrating the demands of the page-turning crime narrative with a discussion of the things that make society tick. McDermid fans who may be lamenting the fact that this is not another novel featuring Dr Tony Hill will quickly change their minds as A Darker Domain exerts its cobra-like grip. --Barry Forshaw

Reader Reviews:

great book poor ending (0/0 people found this helpful)

What a really good book, interesting story, good solid characters, but then what happend, it was as if she ran out of time and throught opps i will have to finish a good book with a 'page' ending!! Now i dislike books that go on and on, i'm all for getting right to the point, but i feel she spoilt a good book by a half hearted abrupt ending, other wise a good read.

Strong premise not sustained (0/0 people found this helpful)

Cold case investigator for the Fife Police DI Force Karen Pirie is called upon to deal with a case that goes back to the troubled period of the 1984 Miner's Strike, when it is discovered that a man believed to gone with five other workers who left the Newton of Wemyss twenty years ago wasn't a scab like the rest of them looking for work in England, but rather Mick Prentice has simply disappeared. At the same time a journalist makes an incredible discovery while on holiday in Italy that reopens another twenty year old case - the kidnapping and murder of the daughter of one of Scotland's richest and most prominent businessmen by a group of anarchists and the disappearance of her son.

McDermid's work is among the very best in crime writing, drawing the reader immediately into the complexities of two linked cases through strong, realistic characterisation, tying the circumstances into real-world events, both historical (the 84 Miners' Strike) and current (the Madeline McCann case) in a manner that reveals the mindset of diverse sections of the community in relation to enormous upheaval, whether in relation to a crime or social unrest.

Thus in A Darker Domain we get the view of the press, the police, the wealthy and the poor, each of them with a very different perspective on events past and present, a perspective that McDermid weaves together with what seems incredible ease, not only presenting a wider view of events, but showing where those perspectives clash and how indeed the original crimes arise out of such social disparities. With such good writing, the novel then is gripping from the start, meaningful in the subjects it examines, realistic in its characterisation.

Unfortunately, this characterisation isn't sustained through to the all-important conclusion and its revelations. Even though one can start to see where the cases might be linked quite early in the novel, McDermid fails to make the connection work, offering up answers much too easily, complete with full, written death-bed confessions that are too timely in relation to other events to remain credible. There's some satisfaction in the concision and neatness of the conclusion, with characters revealing their true nature and reaping the consequences (those involved in the case, as well as the personal lives of the police force officers), but disappointingly, particularly after such a strong opening and premise, they just don't ring true.

A Tough Tale in a Dark Setting (1/2 people found this helpful)

"A Darker Domain," a startlingly good new British mystery by Scottish author Val McDermid is a standalone thriller, her first novel for new publisher Harper. McDermid is now author of 22 novels. With her opening salvo, A Place of Execution,she won the Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was selected for the New York Times Notable Book of the Year list. This book has also recently been made into a television serial, under the same name, Place of Execution [DVD] [2008]. McDermid is, of course, a leading exponent of the "tartan noir," school of mystery-writing: the specifically Scottish, bloody-minded, tough but slyly humorous approach to a thriller. She is best known for her "Wire in the Blood" series; it is the basis for a popular ITV TV serial of the same name, Wire in the Blood: Series 1 and 2 (5 Disc Box Set) [DVD] [2002] that stars the tasty Robson Green as Dr. Tony Hill.

To create "Darker Domain," the writer has gone back to her birthplace: Kirkcaldy, Fife, coal mining country on the east coast of Scotland, not too far physically, but a world removed mentally and emotionally, from Edinburgh, the country's administrative and political capital. Within this dark, harsh landscape, McDermid grew up in the mining villages of East Wemyss. She is a daughter of the mining community there: she dedicates the book to "Meg and Tom McCall, my maternal grandparents. They showed me love, they taught me about community, and they never forgot the shame of standing in line at a soup kitchen to feed their bairns."

Oddly enough, or perhaps not, this part of the world, until now, has been principally noted as the birthplace of Adam Smith, perhaps most dismal of economists. It's now got some more additional, recent bragging rights; in addition to being the place where McDermid was born and schooled, it's the place where Gordon Brown, current British Prime Minister, was born and schooled, pretty much alongside her. She is pretty quick to point this out, early in the book; but she also points out that he was no miner's child, but, as the Scots call them, a "son of the manse:" a clergyman's child.

For her story's backdrop, McDermid has also gone back to that crucial time, 1984-5 that she obviously well remembers. Conservative Margaret Thatcher was then in office as British Prime Minister. Thatcher was no friend to the laboring classes, and surely not to the miners, who, under their power-mad chief, Arthur Scargill, embarked upon a long, losing, illegal strike. To quote the author, speaking elsewhere, again:" The miners' strike is part of the history syllabus now. It feels far too recent for history to have weighed these events in the balance. But at least these days; it's not only the victors who have the chance to write the record. `A Darker Domain' touches on some of that history. I'm proud that it's also part of my own past."

In the throes of the controversial national miners' strike, Mick Prentice apparently abandons his home to join strikebreakers heading south. He's good as dead to friends and family. Twenty-three years later, a young woman walks into a police station to tell Detective Inspector Karen Pirie, head of the Cold Case Review Team, that her father is missing. At that same historic juncture, local heiress Catriona Maclennan Grant and her infant son had been kidnapped, and the heiress was killed: the ransom payoff went wrong. Her son has disappeared, never to be seen again. Until, twenty-three years later, a Tuscan tourist discovers new evidence in an abandoned villa, evidently recently used as a squat. That suddenly revivified cold case also ends up on Pirie's desk, at about the same time. Pirie charges into both investigations, not realizing she will eventually have but one case on her hands.

From this promising powerful framework, McDermid has rung many changes, convincing any reader of several different solutions, each in their turn. Her writing's white hot, narrative, dialog, and descriptions of that dark domain she knows so well are superb, and, for better or worse, she has dispensed with the sadistic, particularly sexual, torture that has marked her earlier work.

McDermid again illustrates that she has an imagination worth, well, killing for; and while this may not be the book she was born to write, it is surely a book she was born to write.

a darker domain? (1/2 people found this helpful)

Hi, my first Val McDermid novel to be honest and what a disappointment! I got to about a quarter of the way through, after a couple of nights reading, and realised I had worked out the plot and how it may end. I am still compelled to read on though, she does have a way of writing that keeps you interested. I have to admit to feeling a bit cheated though.

I may try another of her books but have read similar reviews of others.

Excellent Scottish thriller (1/1 people found this helpful)

"A Darker Domain" is Scottish, which is wonderful! Karen Pirie works cold cases for the Fife police and searches for a miner that went missing twenty-some years earlier and tries to solve the mystery of a kidnap, murder, and disappearence of a woman and child - again some twenty years earlier. The pace is slow at first, but picks up and the plot is excellent.

Val Mc Dermid has been called the queen of cliff-hangers. I agree, but not in a positive way. I find that almost every scene ends with an obvious cliff hanger, which is a bit repetitive in the long run.

This is a thriller above average. The characters are whole and realistic.

Louise.

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