Weekend reads: Consumed, The Graphic Art of the Underground and The Skeleton Road

The Skeleton Road

Val McDermid is the author of more than thirty works of crime fiction, she has been called the queen of the “tartan noir” genre. The Skeleton Road is the story of Detective Karen Pirie, an: “Overweight Scotswoman with bad hair and an attitude” who works cold cases for Police Scotland. Human remains are found on the roof of a derelict building and forensics lead the police to identify them as from a veteran of the Croatian war.

Serbian war criminals are being assassinated across Europe, could the two be connected? Not all are sympathetic: “Another sadistic fucker with a war crimes record as long as your arm gets a wooden overcoat”, so says an investigator from the justice department, which is trying to discover why ex-defendants from the war crimes tribunal in The Hague are being bumped off in a parallel investigation to Karen Pirie’s.

Val McDermid draws you into her web of intrigue from the very beginning, her writing is deceptively straightforward and utterly compelling. Karen Pirie does have a couple of rather “typical” relationships within the force: there is Jason Murray, “The Mint” a nice, but dim sidekick who always comes good, and then there’s an officious bean counter of a boss who features only briefly.

Overall the novel is joyfully free of too many crime clichés, it is packed with strong female characters and the only alpha male is a corpse. Evidently, it is definitely what you might call a feminist whodunnit.

As for the geezers: ”Who knows why a man does anything?”

The great strength of McDermid’s writing is it’s understatement, the language never gets in the way of the story, but there are a few passages to match any “literary” novelist: The serious crime campus is: “A giant barcode embedded in the landscape”. And as for Glaswegian weather: “Every time she walked out the front door, she was greeted by a different form of rain”. And the break of dawn is beautifully described as: “The crack of a sparrow fart” – a phrase some will be familiar with, but entertaining to read all the same.

The story takes in flashbacks to the Croatian war, Oxford academia and a couple of Trans-European investigations to get to the bottom of the mystery. I worked out the culprit about forty pages from the end, but as it is considered extremely bad form to divulge such information, I’ll keep it to myself. The denouement is nonetheless riveting and not entirely predictable.

The Skeleton Road is an excellent novel, wide-ranging and well crafted, the romantic sections are uplifting and there are many topical references to events such as the Scottish independence vote which are amusing. McDermid is not only a brilliant crime writer, she is a great writer period. I can recommend this book not only to fans of crime fiction, but also to anyone interested in quality writing.

Vulture Weekend was thinking of featuring some of the Man Booker shortlist this week, but they didn’t make the cut. In my mind, Val McDermid outwrites them all. ®

Author Val McDermid
Title The Skeleton Road
Publisher Little, Brown
Price £18.99 (Hardback), £13.99 (Paperback), £9.49 (eBook)
More info Publication web site