“My ambition is to clear cases that everybody else has given up on. To give answers to people that have been waiting way too long to find out who blew a hole in their lives and why.”

This is the fifth novel in the Karen Pirie series by Val McDermid. Karen works in Police Scotland’s Historic Case Unit HCU. She is called in to investigate when a perfectly preserved body is found from a Highland peat bog. Karen is also involved in a fresh case. Something she tried to prevent from happening.
McDermid portrays Scotland and Highlands beautifully. I could see the view before my eyes when I was reading. The story mostly stays in 2018. There are also chapters beginning from 1944 onward telling the background story parallel to how the investigations unravel.
Karen Pirie is strongly dedicated to finding answers for the families and loved ones of the victims in her cases. She has an excellent track record for solving cold cases. And therefore she also has enemies who wish to undermine her. She has also suffered a recent loss and is slowly recovering.
The story was excellent and the build-up kept me on the edge of my seat. But I feel the ending was too abrupt. Like everything was wrapped up in a hurry. All in all it was a good mystery.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Grove Atlantic Monthly Press for providing a copy of this book for review.

Thank you Net Galley. This is one author I had not read previously.. I loved the book and look forward to reading more of her work. Highly recommended.

Broken Ground has made me a new fan of Val McDermid. I am reading everything I can find by this author now. The book was well paced and I enjoyed the protagonist very much. Will be looking forward to more in this series.

I have read all of Val McDermid's books and I have to admit I found it a little hard to get into this particular title at first. I have read the others in this series and felt engaged with Karen Pirie so was surprised. It did not take long for me to engage again, enjoying the surroundings in which much of the novel is set, the complications the Historic Cases Unit experience from within the force, DS McCartney's attempts to thwart the cases and Karen's attempts to move on after the loss of her partner.
Many thanks to Netgalley/Val McDermid/Grove Atlantic for an advanced digital copy of this title. All views expressed are my own.

An excellent novel, mostly based in Scotland. An investigation into a decades old case brings up new clues. Exciting, interesting and a mystery that is finally solved. You won't want to put it down! Broken Ground is a book with something for every type of reader.

This is the first book in a while I have read by Val Mcdermid. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Full of back stabbing, ambition and drama. Dealing wirh all sides of police work and forensics. Plenty to keep the reader interested.

A wonderfully developed mystery. Quite a few twists and turns in this one. I liked Karen Pirie. She is smart and knows her worth as a detective and as a person. Watching her find the clues to pursue until she had enough to get an arrest was interesting. Not your usual body found in a peat bog and lets find the murderer kind of book.

There are so many layers to this novel and the body in the peat bog is only one of the cases Karen Pirie is working on. There is also a young lady who has been in a wheel chair for thirty years. New information and new DNA testing is available to find the man who beat her so severely that she never walked again.

When I saw this book available on NetGalley I was intrigued by the description. I am very happy that I asked for an advance copy of this one. It kept me turning the pages well into the night. Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to review this novel.

Oh it is like meeting up with a well-loved, old friend. How my heart gladdened to welcome this author once again. Throughout the book I just felt quite excited as I knew I would enjoy it; just knew it. I was not disappointed.

In all honesty, when I first saw the subject matter – a body recovered from a peat bog – I did think ‘been there, done that (well, read that)’ but I needn’t have worried for it never strayed into the familiar. Yes, there was a body in a peat bog, been there since 1944: but never has the body been buried with two Indians! No, not the cowboy type – these are motorcycles – I kid you not. Does it sound plausible? It does when it is written by Val Mcdermid. With Karen Pirie as the detective in the Historic Crime Unit we are taken through the police and forensic procedures backed up by vivid descriptions of Edinburgh and Wester Ross and for humour we have her back up Murray, known as Mint.

What can I say? Oh, I suppose, if you are a lover of a well-thought out plot; great characters and brilliantly written – you will never be disappointed with Val McDermid.

Thank you to the author, publishers and NetGalley for providing an ARC via my Kindle in return for an honest review.

This police procedural set in Scotland is delightful! I was very sorry when I finished it as DC Karen Pirie is fresh and original and having a procedural set in the Cold Case Unit is unusual. The characters are slowly developed and the main ones are very likeable including Karen’s colleague DC Jason Murray and some of the peripheral police and technical officers. There is a possible love interest developing and I hope there are more stories with these characters and we get to see that relationship unfold. The unlikeable characters are delightfully bad and a joy to have in the story as counter foils to the main characters. #netgalley was very kind to allow me to read an ARC of #brokenground and I recommend this wholeheartedly.

I had been introduced to Val McDermid through her other series regarding Tony Hill and Carol Jordan and thoroughly enjoyed them. Having read only one of her Inspector Karen Pirie series I was not sure what to expect but was pleasantly surprised. She has a wonderful ability to build a case from the ground up that is logical and precisely plotted. As a result, the pacing is slower, but the intellectual reward is greater. I enjoyed the characters, and look forward to some new developments that foreshadow the future novels. In this particular book , Karen is called to a Scottish peat bog where treasure hunters were seeking to unearth an inheritance. While they unearthed vintage motorcycles, they also found a dead body. Unearthing this mystery came under the province of her historic case unit, and digging through a myriad of clues helps to provide closure. In addition, there is a current case that is juggled going on simultaneously that offsets the other investigation and makes for an interesting juxtaposition. For individuals looking to begin the series, it is fine to just jump in at book five. Be prepared for a lot of Scottish humor and flavoring; it only adds to this atmospheric novel.

"The slap of spades in dense peat was an unmistakable sound. They slipped in and out of rhythm:overlapping, separating, cascading, then coming together again, much like the men's heavy breathing."

A body? Almost definitely, I thought. But it's not. And if I gave you a thousand guesses, I doubt you'd guess what they're burying in peat (unless you've read the book).

Back at the office, DCI Karen Pirie has a new boss. You'd think, since she's a woman, life would be better for Karen, but no - the DCI and DC Jason "The Mint" Murray have DS Gerry McCartney foisted upon them, ostensibly to spy and report to Ann Markie (Dog Biscuit). Their Historic Case Unit investigates cases younger than 70 years, but "cold" in terms of evidence. Meanwhile, Karen's friend, River, a forensic anthropologist gets the peat mystery.

Karen and Jason must navigate the bad politics, blurry lines drawn between cases, while they cannot escape the feeling that one bad move will have them blown up and out of jobs.

Val McDermid weaves an imaginative plot, including Highland games, a real highlander, and ties to spy-training units in WWII.

I thoroughly enjoyed the pace, the tension, the detail and the resolution, even though it did come a little suddenly.

BROKEN GROUND by Val McDermid is a dark mystery well worth the read. It hooked me from the first page and kept me reading into the night.

The Scottish police procedural novel is a genre that I generally like. As in others of this type, I expected and received a good amount of environmental details, accurate language and authentic voices and relationships. However I am not as familiar with the DCI Pirie series, of which this is the 5th (?) installment. I found the first several chapters hard going in that I disliked the main characters so much. They didn't improve a great deal. found the storytelling well done, the writing intelligent, the secondary characters interesting. So though this series may not be my cup of tea. Val McDermid may be worth a second look.

All you need to know to know that this is a fabulous book is to see that it was written by Val McDermid. And then to follow that up, it is a Karen Pirie book. I got nothing done until I read this entire book!

Val McDermid's book series never fail to satisfy. I am pleased she issued another book in Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie of the Historic Crimes Unit series. This book includes four plot lines. Pirie starts off investigating a historic series of rapes, but is soon caught up in a WWII buried treasure case (complete with a treasure map), which leads her to a murder in the 1990s (with a perfectly preserved body buried in a peat bog) and which solving could cost Pirie her career, and a modern day case of a beautiful young woman plotting a domestic murder. Pirie juggles all four cases by patiently connecting the dots and often going out on a limb, meanwhile, she has a Judas on her staff and a boss who is out to get her. What makes Pirie such an interesting protagonist is her intelligence, compassion, determination, cynical attitude to human nature, dogged patience and attention to minor details when working a case. Besides the mystery this book gets readers closer to Pirie as a person. She is still working through her grief after the death of her lover, yet in this outing, she is trying to see if she has what it takes to let go of the past and trust in herself as a woman again. The descriptions of the Scottish Highlands and the urbanscape of Edinburgh all lend to a great setting to spend some time in McDermid's capable hands weaving and doling out suspense. Thank you to Netgalley for a pre-publish opportunity to read this book and opportunity for an honest review.

This is my first book by this author. I enjoyed the book and it did not interfere with the story at all that I had not read any other of her books that came before this one. Very enjoyable read. Good mystery. Pace kept me entertained! I received a free copy for my review and here it is! Get it, read it, like it!

it's a good detective story. I only wish the hipsters had more of a comeuppance/embarrassment. The senior office politics are intriguing.

I can't believe I have never read anything by Val McDermid before. After reading this police procedural featuring a highly competent, no-nonsense woman detective, I'm impressed with the story itself and with the characters. All the supporting characters are well developed, making the world feel real. It's also an opportunity to learn some new Scottish words; be sure to read this one with a dictionary handy. The best thing about discovering an author with a long list of previously published books is that you can look forward to so much more high quality detective fiction without having to wait another year for the next novel.

One of the storylines in Broken Ground is that DCI Karen Pirie’s scheming boss is trying to get rid of her. On this showing, my sympathies are with the boss.

This is what Pirie does in a single week: interfere in a case in which she is a witness, be rude and aggressive to a witness in her own investigation, socialise with a potential suspect, take on a case before getting official clearance and assault another police officer. (There’s more but I’d have to give spoilers.)

There’s nothing wrong with having a dodgy cop as your protagonist, but we are constantly told how brilliant Pirie is and that she has a fantastic clear-up rate. The trouble is, in this book we don’t see her doing anything impressive. All she seems to do all day is eat and moan about the traffic (we also get exhaustive details about the parking arrangements at the various locations she visits).

I’m all for local colour, I used to live in Edinburgh so it’s nice to revisit landmarks, but there are so many namechecks for cafes and restaurants (and even a particular supermarket’s wine) that I was sure McDermid must have a product placement deal. Among all this we are told that Pirie has lost weight, which is about as convincing as the claims of her brilliance.

The case itself is quite interesting, revolving round buried World War 2 loot in the Highlands and a body in a peat bog. However the team establish who their suspect is quite early on, and elements of the story are told in flashback which often repeat what we already know. The end is more grandstanding than dramatic climax and a number of subplots are left dangling.

McDermid is often praised for the accuracy of her use of forensics and has even written a non-fiction book on the subject. But it seems that the commitment to realism does not extend to the rest of her work. Are we really expected to believe that a DCI spends her day looking up birth certificates online, or travelling hundreds of miles on a routine enquiry for elimination purposes? Without even ringing ahead to check if the person she intends to speak to is in?

Broken Ground also introduces a new team member who is childishly rude and insubordinate to Pirie from the start. I found this unconvincing. The police have a strict hierarchy and expectations about behaviour. Of course officers find ways to disrespect and undermine their superiors, but it would be both more realistic and more interesting to see him do it with subtlety. Similarly, Pirie’s boss is a caricature and her motivation for her attacks on Pirie is thin.

Despite everything, the pages keep turning. To use a food analogy (which seems particularly appropriate in this case) it’s like a takeaway that doesn’t taste great and you know won’t do you any good, but it has just the right confection of salt, fat and sugar to make you go on eating.

What frustrates me is the fact that McDermid, like her creation, is capable of so much more. The early Jordan and Hill books, in particular, combined complex characterisation with dramatic storylines and an emotional resonance that stayed with me long after I’d forgotten the plots. Maybe it’s easy for her to turn out a book that’s good enough. But I wish she’d go deep and write something great.

Couldn't put it down. I enjoyed this book so much, I immediately ordered more by the author. The protagonist is a realistic, believable detective facing the challenges of the modern day police force. I enjoyed the author's blending of past and present-day plot points. WWII history buffs, fans of police procedurals, and mystery readers will enjoy it.