I really enjoyed this book, the writing is excellent and the story has many twists and turns. It is a great whodunit mystery that brings in several different scenarios when it first starts, I would suggest paying attention to all the different characters that are introduced, it will help understand later.  As the story progresses it follows two main storylines happening at the same time with the cold case file squad and their small staff with a non supportive leadership. 
I would highly recommend, one of the better murder mysteries I have read in quite a while. The character development is well done, and it draws you in to care about all the them. I kept hoping Hamish would come out clean and the Dog Biscuit would get put in her place.
I was given the opportunity to receive this book from Atlantic Monthly Press through NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. This one gets 5*****’s.

I will admit I kind of struggled with this book. I just felt like there was so much going on and the characters for me weren't particularly enjoyable. The book was interesting but perhaps not just for me.

I requested this book fron Netgalley as I have previously enjoyed many of the author’s books. But for some reason I have never come across this series. 
I saw this as an audiobook from the library, so decided to listen to the story as I’m very partial to a scottish accent and I was entranced.
As book 5 in the series and not having read any previously, it was surprising easy to slip into the story line. For me it was a solid basic police procedural novel. DCI Karen Pirie is the lead in homicide cold cases and with a 25 year old mystery of a body found with some much older Indian motorbikes, she is thoughly tested.
There is enough back story provided so that your aware that Karen has has some recent tradgy in her life but also that station politics is rearing it’s ugly head. There are a number of other threads running through which tie in seamlessly to a satisfing conclusion.
This is one series that I can see translating well onto the screen.

Val McDermid's Karen Pirie novels are fast becoming my favourite series of hers.  The cold case element is intriguing and the reader is secure in the knowledge that Val has done her research. I love to pick up the little techie details that help to solve the crime and am constantly in awe of the progress made in forensic anthropology.



So, in Broken Bones we are transported to the highlands of Scotland during WW2 where elite training camps were set up for reconnaissance and sabotage purposes. To find out more about these elite training camps click here . What I loved about Broken Bones was the two concurrent  narratives - the one exploring Pirie's ongoing investigation and the one detailing the the series of events that lead to a body being discovered, buried, beside two vintage motorbikes. She paints a very realistic picture of the highlandsboth historically and contemporary. 
Her plotting is flawless - never too much detail, never too little, but always with little tantlising titbits that eventually  elicit an 'aw, so that's what happened.'

One of the things I enjoy most about this series though is Karen Pirie herself. Her personal journey has been challenging, poignant and sometimes downright brutal. In Broken Ground she has evolved yet again and is in a differetn place. It is this relatability that keep me hooked. Karen isn't just a great detective - we already knew that - her capacity to renew herself and open herself personally has been a delight to read.
Can't wait for the next  Pirie novel.

I wait and wait for new books by certain authors, and Val McDermid is at the top of the list.  I was thrilled when she added a new series about Karen Pirie in Scotland.  This one is superb.

Karen is still grieving her late partner and lover Phil, but work is her salvation.  This new mystery about two Indian motorcycles from WWII, a dead body buried with the motorcycles, and one more case for the Historical Case Unit team makes for quite a complicated problem for Karen and her team of players.  A new detective is added to the team by her nemesis and boss, who is still trying to get rid of her.

A couple from London come to a rural area near Edinburgh to find the treasure left by the woman's grandfather to her in the form of a map where the two motorcycles were buried at the end of WWII.  But the topography has changed a lot since the end of WWII nearly 60 years ago...  And so it begins.

You will love this new story by McDermid.  Don't miss it.

In Val McDermid's Broken Ground (Atlantic Monthly Press 2018), in the Karen Pirie series, Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie of Police Scotland’s Historic Cases Unit is chasing down a decades-old sex crime murder when she gets called to help with a body found in the grave of a 1944 motorcycle--but the body was buried well after the motorcycle. How it got there takes most of the book to figure out but Pirie does what she always does--starts at the beginning, one brilliant step at a time. As if this isn't enough for her three-person squad, she becomes involved in a double murder.

Karen Pirie is a fascinating character. She is a woman’s woman.

"She’d never fitted his image of what a woman should be –obsequious, obedient and ornamental."
She is intelligent and quick thinking, logical and rational, and comfortable leading her squad, being a hard-a** female, and standing up for right when no one else will. When her soulmate died, she assumed she would never again find love and convinced herself she would be content to find justice for victims. But here, in the Scottish bogs (the setting of one of the murders), she surprises herself by feeling a flicker of interest--that is returned.

An integral part of the story is the growing animosity between Pirie and her boss, Ann Markie. It's not only Pirie's success that threatens her boss but her refusal to play the deference game.

"Ann Markie was devoted to the kind of justice that let her craft sound bites for the evening news."

Now, juggling three high-profile murder cases, her boss is annoyed to the point Pirie fears for her job.

I am addicted to Val McDermid's books because she has such a way with words. From her pen, the phrases are evocative, pithy, uniquely clever, and often very Scottish. See if you agree:

"...the cool night air wicked the sweat from the back of his neck."

"...tacked on at the back like a grudging afterthought"

"But I know one thing. You’ve left way too late to make a good first impression."

"An insult of a window looked out across an alley on to a blank wall."

Broken Ground is as much a procedural on police work and on how to run a squad in Scotland as it is a fast-moving, twist-filled murder-mystery. It is highly recommended for those who love police crime novels and murder mysteries.

--to be reviewed on my blog, WordDreams 11/30/18

Everyone deserves justice. DCI Karen Pirie heads up the HCU, her team deals with all the cold case. Karen believes that everyone deserves answers but her boss is making things very hard for her. She has just gotten a new team member that she didn't want and she doesn't trust him. The team has just gotten a new case that goes back to 1995 and she is determined to find the young man's killer even if it means her putting her career on the line. She is battling to find answers to a old case rape case and she has to find the proof that will see a woman pay for her crimes. She knows that she can trust her fellow team member Jason he has come a long way and he never gives up either. Can she bring all the clues together to solve these cases and keep her job? She isn't too sure about the man that wants to be part of her life in a way she is still grieving for her dead partner, is it time to move on? A really good read. Love Karen she never gives up and she deserves to be happy so hopefully she can be again. Jason grows on you. Her boss is a complete pain hopefully she gets what is coming to her. I was lucky enough to receive a copy via Netgalley and the publishing house in exchange for my honest review.

Another great read from Val McDermid written with her usual light touch ,  DCI Karen Prime is becoming my favourite Scottish detective .

Val McDermid has long deserved her title, Queen of Scottish crime. Starting with the riveting Tony Hill / Carol Jordan series, she immediately demonstrated a genius for creating fascinating and compelling protagonists. Several years ago she introduced her readers to a new character, Karen Pirie, in many ways an every-woman for those of us unsure of our place in society, of our body image, or our right to love and be loved. There have been five Karen Pirie novels to date and this series just seems to get better and better. Broken Ground is the fifth of the these, and while Karen is still struggling to come to terms with the death of her lover and colleague Phil Parhatka, she is on the long road to healing. 

In the Scottish Highlands, an American couple has arrived with a map, to dig up a treasure they claim was left to them  by the woman’s grandfather. The indicated location is on the land of Hamish McKenzie, a dishy, tall rugged Ur-Scotsman – in a kilt!. While they do unearth the treasure, they also uncover something far less welcome, a well preserved body, wearing designer trainers that can be successfully dated to 1995, making this a case for Karen and her cold cases team. 

She and the Mint, have recently been lumbered with a cocky Glaswegian, DS Gerry McCartney, whose real task is to find dirt on Karen so her new boss can get her fired. So she and Jason must both solve two cold cases while trying to prevent DS McCartney from screwing everything up. Once again filed with fascinating characters both new and familiar, including her slow but loyal assistant, DC Jason ‘the Mint’ Murray, or DCI Jimmy Hutton, both also struggling to process the loss of their friend Phil Parhatka.

Broken Ground is vintage McDermid, full of twisting but believable plot lines, a sprinkling of thoroughly unlikeable characters and wonderful descriptions of Scotland. I can happily give 4****

Thoroughly enjoyed this latest Val MCDermid novel. 1st I’ve read featuring DCI Karen Pirie however I’m now looking forward to catching up with the others in this series. 
Good old fashioned policework, plenty of twists & turns with beautiful Scotland as the background. 
Had me gripped for the outset. 
4.5 stars

Another top notch story by Val McDermid.. This author is extremely accomplished and this  well crafted police procedural is up to her usual very high standards. 

As always, the storyline, characters and dialogue are superbly realised and this book is highly recommended, although the conclusion seemed a little peremptory.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic, Atlantic Monthly Press for an e-galley of this novel.

This police procedural novel set in Scotland is the fifth in the Inspector Karen Pirie series. I have not read any of the series before now but had no problem picking up on the main characters and understanding where they stand in their personal and professional lives at the beginning of this story. I didn't think I was going to like this book very much but kept reading and found I was being drawn into sympathizing with Karen as she spends hours and hours walking around the city trying to fight the insomnia caused by the recent death of the love of her life. As the story unfolds Karen and the Historic Cases Unit find themselves involved in three separate crimes and Karen is locked in a formidable battle with her boss over control of the HCU. She thought having a woman as her new boss would be a positive situation but that is certainly turning out to be wrong.

The cases investigated in this novel are all completed in a satisfactory way even though I thought at one point the author might have tried to do too much in one book. I did enjoy this book, I think the characters are well developed and the unraveling of the mystery of the body found buried in the peat bog was especially interesting. I'm glad I decided to read this book and plan to read other novels written by Val McDermid.

I had so wanted this to be great but is was only ok. I like Karen Pirie and have read a few of these books in the past and thought them pretty good. I'm a died in the wool Val McDermid fan and always want them to be amazing and she usually delivers. This one wasn't my fave though, I loved the start, and thought the whole idea of burying motorcycles so that they could later be retrieved after the war and sold, was cool. Then they find a body buried with the bikes and Karen and her team enter to investigate this historic murder. Unfortunately Karen is grieving her partner, her boss hates her and is setting her up to fail. That isn't good but then Karen goes on dates with one of the suspects and generally behaves in a way that I found unrealistic and the story just plods along. We get bogged down in the drama between Karen and her boss, the spy who is infiltrating Karen's team and the detail of the investigation, so much detail, so slow to move along. 

I got frustrated with Karen, need the story to get moving and just struggled through it. I was helped by a plane journey which meant I got stuck into it in the end but it seldom takes me so long to finish a book. I do however look forward to a new Val and hope for one that is a bit more exciting.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me access to this book.

I was not familiar with Val McDermid's books, but I enjoy a good mystery and Broken Ground sounded intriguing when it came available for review.  I am glad I chose to read it; I have found a new mystery series to read.  The characters are well-developed and interesting, especially Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie.  I like that she is complex and somewhat flawed, confident and steadfast in some aspects, but uncertain in other areas.  The central mystery is well-developed and intricate, with pieces slowly coming together.  The author does a good job of alternating between past and present as needed, revealing just enough in the past to keep the story going without giving away too much too soon.  I also liked that she did not make the characters, especially some of the minor characters, into stereotypes, which would have been easy to do.  

The book is set in Scotland, with good use of Scottish words and phrases.  As the author is Scottish, it should be expected that she would have a good grasp of her native tongue, but I have read enough books set in other countries to know that authors seeking to appeal to a mass market sometimes go overboard trying to make the book sound "authentic" or they use the local language only in a humorous manner.  I was glad that this was not the case with Ms. McDermid's book.

This is apparently the fifth book in the DCI Pirie series.  Having enjoyed this read, I will definitely have to go back and read the first four books in the series at some point.

I received a copy of the e-book from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

Val McDermid’s thirty-second novel was my first, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I’ve read novels from successful authors before, at times with mixed results. “Broken Ground” exceeded all my expectations.

While others might write with the belief that their characters always will only work on one case at a time, Ms. McDermid deals in realities. This book keeps your attention, sliding from one case to the next and then back again with such ease that one can easily imagine how busy the detectives are and what it would feel like attempting to balance their work days.

What I enjoyed most was the author’s expertise at slowly dribbling out the clues, allowing us to see no further than the characters so we all discovered the guilty parties at the same time. This was accomplished through true police work, not the fast and furious action we see crammed into 46 minutes of visual exploits on a weekly police television program. While adrenaline junkies may not find this book to be their nirvana, it is refreshing to read a story that is down-to-earth and totally believable.

I also like the main character, Karen Pirie. She is not weighed down by either a medical issue nor a haunting event in her past that threatens to incapacitate her at any moment. Karen is a strong female lead, and Ms. McDermid makes sure this does not go to her head. She leads with confidence rather than sheer force of will, and this aspect alone encourages me to seek out the author’s previous books in this series.

Bottom line: Excellent book loaded with police procedural aspects, and a story that keeps you entertained without gun battles or car chases. Highly recommended. Five stars.

My thanks to NetGalley and Atlantic Monthly Press for an advance complimentary ebook.

Another great Val McDermid character-driven mystery set in Scotland and featuring DCI Karen Pirie in her fifth  installment. Pirie continues to be the rule flouting, coffee swilling, imsomniac still grieving for her late partner in work and love. There are always nemeses out to block her dedication as head of the Historic cold case division and this is no exception. But thanks to her dedicated partner Jason, not the sharpest tool in the shed but honing his skills under the kind Tutelage of DCI Pirie, they manage to succeed on all fronts. A buried treasure in the Highland peat bogs morphs into a decades-old murder, and Kirie also manages to get involved in a current murder case, though not without ruffling her superiors’ feathers. I love McDermid’s descriptions of Scotland, her expert pacing and spot-on dialogue scattered with colloquialisms like wee, dinae and lassie. 3.5 stars for this ARC from NetGalley. BrokenGround@NetGalley.

The historic cases unit of Fife PD is one that is often overlooked but yet fills a critical public function: bringing closure to families and friends. It initially seems like another routine cold case when DCI Karen Pirie is called to the scene of a body found in a peat bog. However, this time there is one big difference: the body is wearing a pair of modern-day sneakers first produced in the mid-nineties. Along with the body are two Indian motorcycles dating back to the second world war, buried by two soldiers who intended to return for them. The question is, how did the body get there and when? 

Broken Ground by Val McDermid is the fith DCI Karen Pirie novel of the series and was not a disappointment. The series is set in rural Scotland in the locality of Fife. While it may not seem like a series based on cold cases will have much longevity, I foresee a bright future for this series based on this novel. McDermid is an accomplished author with any number of awards to her name, including the Barry Award for Best British Crime novel for the first book in this series, The Distant Echo. I have every intention of reading all the preceding series’ books and give this novel 4/5 stars.

*A copy of the ebook was the only consideration received in exchange for this review.*

Val McDermond I'd predictable  - she ALWAYS writes tightly paced, intense stories.

Alice is not a silly, vapid heroine who needs to be pulled into solving the mystery.

I could not put this down, loved the characters, the police procedural and the intriguing cold case mystery.

I really liked Broken Ground.  There’s a back story concerning the animosity felt by Karen towards her boss and vise versa. There’s a cold case concerning two stolen motorcycles that were buried in1944 and a dead body found in the sane hole buried about 1995. Lots of questions that needed to be solved.  Karen is also helping a friend solve a murder between husband, wife, and best friend..  I totally enjoyed it.  One complaint:  I felt like the end was too quick and all the loose ends came together too soon and too easily.