The Distant Echo - Val McDermid

Following the publication of the tremendous “The Mermaids Singing” I devoured with relish everything that Val McDermid wrote and it was having enjoyed her books that I became an avid fan of crime fiction so much so that I had found other authors I liked much better by the time “The Distant Echo” was published. Over Christmas, though, I found a copy belonging to my mother and set off to find out what I’d been missing. “The Distant Echo” starts like all good thrillers – with the discovery of a body. In this case it’s the late 1970s and it’s the body of a young barmaid that has been found by four students coming home drunk from a party. In the absence of any ...  Read the complete review

A cold case investigation into the murder of a young woman reopens after 25 years In St Andrews in December 1978, four friends going home from a Christmas party find a young woman dying and go for help but too late. Then the police?s interest in them seems to be only as suspects. Nothing is proved (or disproved). In 2003 it seems like all four of the self-styled ?Laddies fi? Kirkcaldy? have made a success of their lives in their various chosen careers, two in the US, two still in Scotland. Then the investigation is reopened and soon after two of the men are murdered. Is this the distant echo of the past? Alex Gilby isn?t sure who killed Rosie Duff back ...  Read the complete review