The Skeleton Road

October 20, 2014
The discovery of a man’s skeleton atop an Edinburgh building slated for demolition kick-starts Diamond Dagger Award–winner McDermid’s hit-or-miss follow-up to 2008’s A Darker Domain. Det. Chief Insp. Karen Pirie identifies the remains as those of Gen. Dimitar “Mitja” Petrovic, an intelligence expert with ties to the Croatian army, NATO, and the U.N. Karen learns that he had lived for years with Oxford University professor Maggie Blake, who met the general during her time as an academic in Dubrovnik during the Balkan conflict. Maggie, who hasn’t seen or heard from Mitja in eight years, always assumed that he returned to Croatia. The answers lie in the past, particularly the bloody Serb-Croat conflict in the 1990s, so it’s inevitable that Karen and Maggie end up traveling to Croatia. McDermid does a fine job recreating the brutal Balkan years, but the characters lack depth, leaving readers yearning for the richness of her long-running Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series. Agent: Jane Gregory, Gregory & Company.

November 15, 2014

When a skeleton with a bullet hole in its skull is found in a parapet of an abandoned building in Edinburgh, the case is clearly in DC Karen Pirie's Historic Case Unit's jurisdiction. The body turns out to belong to a Croatian general who worked with the UN War Crimes Tribunal following the Balkan Wars in the 1990s. As a result, Pirie's investigation ranges from Edinburgh and Oxford to Dubrovnik and Sheviningen, and, as it turns out, she is not the only one following the trail or seeking justice for the dead. VERDICT The backdrop of the Balkan Wars result in some unexpected plot twists but also leads to a loftier examination of the morality of vengeance. However, Pirie's humor and tenacity balance the larger issues, introducing a crime novel that is both enjoyable and irresistible. [See Prepub Alert, 4/21/14.]--Lisa O'Hara, Univ. of Manitoba Libs., Winnipeg

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