Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently welcomed Val McDermid for a virtual event for the bookstore. Past Lying is the seventh in the series. Peters recommends the Karen Pirie series, Season 1, on BritBox, if you have the chance to watch it. You can order an unsigned edition of the U.S. edition, or a signed copy of the U.K. edition through the Webstore, although there aren’t a large number of the U.K. copies left. https://store.poisonedpen.com/browse/filter/t/Past%20Lying/k/keyword
Here’s the summary of Past Lying.
In this superb new addition to Val McDermid’s masterful crime series, DCI Karen Pirie returns in a propulsive thriller of deceit and vengeance, set against the disquiet of a global pandemic
Britain’s reigning “Queen of Crime” (The Scotsman), Val McDermid is the award-winning, internationally bestselling author of over thirty novels. The long-awaited seventh novel in the acclaimed series that has captivated audiences for twenty years, both on the page and now in the Edgar Award–nominated ITV/BritBox show, Past Lying is a full tilt novel of ego, retribution, deceit, and just how far one will go to settle the score.
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 facing off over a chessboard. But it quickly emerges that their real-life competition is drawing blood. What unspools is a twisted game of betrayal and revenge, and as Karen and her team attempt to disentangle fact from fiction, it becomes clear that their investigation is more complicated than they ever imagined.
A tense, atmospheric page-turner, Past Lying reaffirms McDermid as one of the most talented crime writers of her generation.
Val McDermid’s bestselling novels have won the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year Award, and the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger and Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for outstanding achievement. She is also a multiple finalist for the Edgar Award, including for the Fact Crime nominee Forensics. She lives in Scotland.
Enjoy the conversation with Val McDermid.