"[A Darker Domain] combines a thrilling story with heartbreaking questions of social justice and history. "-Seattle Times The New York Times calls Val McDermid, "As smooth a practitioner of crime fiction as anyone out there…the best we've got." Time spent with her extraordinary thriller, A Darker Domain, will prove that it's true. Set in Scotland, the milieu of Ian Rankin's John Rebus, McDermid's brilliant exploration of loyalty and greed intertwines...

"When a teenage joyrider crashes a stolen car and ends up in a coma, a routine DNA test reveals a connection to an unsolved murder from twenty-two years before. It's a cold case that should be straightforward. But it's as twisted as the DNA helix itself. Meanwhile, Karen is mired in grief and guilt after the death of her partner. She finds herself irresistibly drawn to another mystery that she has no business investigating, a mystery that has its...

It's April 2020 and Edinburgh is in lockdown. It would seem like a strange time for a cold case to go hot, the streets all but empty, an hour's outdoor exercise the maximum allowed; but a mere pandemic doesn't mean crime takes a holiday. When a source at the National Library contacts DCI Karen Pirie's team about documents in the archive of a recently deceased crime novelist, it seems it's game on again. At the center of it, a novel: two crime novelists...