I am reviewing the standalone thriller novel A Darker Domain by Val McDermid which is a very good novel that I bought from a car boot sale. It was published in 2009 and is around 390 pages so is a decent length. Part of this story is set at the miners strike in the late 80’s which is something that must have had a big impact on Val who grew up in a Scottish mining village. Many families even today were torn apart by whether or not they supported the strike. The key character in this story is cold case expert DI Karen Pirie who is in 2007 investigating a case at the time of the strike when a militant coal miner who everyone says would have never let the NUM down supposedly left for Nottingham and went back to work. This was assumed because money with a Nottingham postmark kept being posted to the family but now suprisingly has stopped making them suspicious. Apparently it was quite common for people who wanted to go back to work and lived in militant areas to leave and go to moderate areas because of the risk of reprisals. Anyway there is a link between his disappearance and a kidnapping of a wealthy industrialists wife and baby who although a ransom was paid were never seen again. The kidnapping went wrong and Pirie finds the 2 cases are linked. The kidnappers were miners who were desperate for money. I think certainly this is quite a personal novel for Val which does try to look at the human side of the strike. It wouldn’t surprise me if DI Pirie becomes a series like Tony Hill in its own right. I did definitely enjoy this novel which might be a bit gruesome for some and I definitely recommend it.
