Winter Preview 2026 Evening Program Signup
Winter Preview 2026 Evening Program Signup
December 20, 2025
My book group had our last meeting of the year on Monday night. It’s become a tradition that our final get-together of the year is an appetizers and dessert evening. We barely talk about who is bringing what in advance, so there is no rhyme or reason to the menu, except that we were discussing LAST CALL AT THE SAVOY by Brisa Carleton. Since the book is set at the American Bar in the Savoy Hotel, cocktails were in order.
Editorial Content for Silent Bones: A Karen Pirie Novel
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
Not many writers can stand toe to toe with Val McDermid. For decades, she has put forth a catalogue of outstanding and cleverly plotted mysteries and thrillers that have been the force behind both bestselling novels and successful streaming series and films. Read More
Teaser
Scotland, 2025. When torrential winter rain causes a landslide on a motorway, it dislodges more than mud and asphalt --- it reveals a skeleton, concealed when the road was built 11 years prior. Sam Nimmo, an investigative journalist who’d been poking his nose into the murky politics of the Scottish independence referendum, had become the prime suspect in the brutal murder of his girlfriend when he vanished. Now he’s reappeared, buried under the motorway. It’s the perfect cold case for DCI Karen Pirie, chief of Police Scotland’s Historic Cases Unit. What was Nimmo investigating that was worth killing over? Or was it revenge for murdering his girlfriend? Meanwhile, an allegation of murder has surfaced over the supposedly accidental death of a hotel manager. It may have links to another accident on a remote Highland road.
Promo
Scotland, 2025. When torrential winter rain causes a landslide on a motorway, it dislodges more than mud and asphalt --- it reveals a skeleton, concealed when the road was built 11 years prior. Sam Nimmo, an investigative journalist who’d been poking his nose into the murky politics of the Scottish independence referendum, had become the prime suspect in the brutal murder of his girlfriend when he vanished. Now he’s reappeared, buried under the motorway. It’s the perfect cold case for DCI Karen Pirie, chief of Police Scotland’s Historic Cases Unit. What was Nimmo investigating that was worth killing over? Or was it revenge for murdering his girlfriend? Meanwhile, an allegation of murder has surfaced over the supposedly accidental death of a hotel manager. It may have links to another accident on a remote Highland road.
About the Book
The new installment in the “relentlessly engrossing series” (Wall Street Journal) finds Karen Pirie and her team investigating the murder of a journalist paved under a motorway. But was it his work or his private life that put him there?
Scotland, 2025. When torrential winter rain causes a landslide on a motorway, it dislodges more than mud and asphalt --- it reveals a skeleton, concealed when the road was built 11 years prior.
Sam Nimmo, an investigative journalist who’d been poking his nose into the murky politics of the Scottish independence referendum, had become the prime suspect in the brutal murder of his girlfriend when he vanished. Now he’s reappeared, buried under the motorway. It’s the perfect cold case for DCI Karen Pirie, chief of Police Scotland’s Historic Cases Unit. What was Nimmo investigating that was worth killing over? Or was it revenge for murdering his girlfriend?
Meanwhile, an allegation of murder has surfaced over the supposedly accidental death of a hotel manager. It may have links to another accident on a remote Highland road. It’s a series of puzzles that tests Karen and her team to their limits. And possibly beyond.
A darkly propulsive thriller of secrets hidden at the core of a Scottish Highlands town, SILENT BONES reaffirms Val McDermid as a crime writer of inimitable power.
Audiobook available, read by Cathleen McCarron
