Val McDermid

'The Distant Echo'
Harper Collins
Paperback
2004

Val McDermid biography by Chris High

Four in the morning in Fife and four very drunk students stumble across the body of a woman lying in the snow. Rosie has been raped, stabbed and left for dead in an ancient Pictish cemetery and the only suspects are the four young men stained with her blood, having tried to save her life. Twenty-five years later the police mount a cold case review of Rosie's unsolved murder and the four still remain prime suspects.

This is powerful stuff that takes readers back twenty-five years and then brings them back to the present with a thump and although cold case squads seem to be in vogue at the moment, McDermid takes the subject to a different level with this novel.
The writing is tight, the description vivid and the dialogue natural and believable. But above all, it puts the reader into the minds of the suspects and asks them what they would do in a similar situation, whilst the relationships which had been enjoyed with the other suspects, slowly disintegrates under the pressure.
This is the type of quality writing that has become expected of an author of such standing, as she shuffles through the lives of all of those involved across twenty-five years. The ending, though not entirely surprising, is satisfying in the manner in which all of the loose ends are tied together so that one is never quite sure until the very end.
A high-octane, dilemma-ridden novel, The Distant Echo enthrals from start to finish.

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