Past Lying - Val McDermid

So does reading the books of the Karen Pirie series in the wrong order make any difference. Fortunately in this case no. I read Silent Bones first, so already knew some of the outcomes in Past Lying, but not the events that lead to those outcomes. Fortunately both those events and their results are largely extraneous to main plot of murder.

There's a heavy background of covid lockdown and how it affects the lives of everybody and the operations of Police Scotland.

So the outline plot of the murder is very interesting. A disgraced author committing a murder in such a way as to have it pinned on a rival who had an affair with his ex-wife. And who then writes it down as a thinly disguised novel with the intention of the novel somehow not appearing until he is dead - as some final ha-ha, fooled you all, he was innocent, it was me.

Its all written and crafted very well, as usual with a Val McDermid book I romped through it at a very happy pace enjoying it as it went. But the weak link in much detective fiction these days is we are waiting for and expecting the twist and in this case is was fairly easy to predict the twist at which point you do have to slightly bite your tongue waiting for the detective team to twig the possibility. So yes, the police are being played and expected to pin the crime on the dead author, exonerating the living author from the attempt to frame him - for the murder which he did commit.

Apart from the expectation of the twist - which I don't know how even a experienced author can solve when faced with a knowing audience - its a good plot with few flaws. My main gripes would with one event which provides key clues to the team about the timing of events. That is, which increasingly successful writer and supposedly meticulous plotter of events, submits a plagiarized story to a competition with no expectation of winning. It seems to be a totally out of character and idiotic thing to do, but it is the trigger for the need to commit murder. And spotting it is the trigger point for the detectives now having proof to the suspicion that they were being played. Having the actions of everybody pivot around an unbelievable stupidity did take some of the pleasure from the plot.