The Distant Echo

The first novel in the bestselling Karen Pirie series.

The award-winning Number One bestseller and Queen of crime fiction, Val McDermid, carves out a stunning psychological thriller. The past is behind them, but what’s still to come will tear them apart…

From the creators of Line of Duty and Bodyguard, the series KAREN PIRIE is now on ITV, starring Lauren Lyle (Outlander).

Some things just won’t let go.

The past, for instance.

That night in the cemetery.

The girl’s body in the snow.

On a freezing Fife morning, four drunken students stumble upon the body of a woman in the snow. Rosie has been raped, stabbed, and left for dead in an ancient Pictish cemetery. The only suspects are the four young men now stained with her blood.

Twenty-five years later, the police mount a ‘cold case’ review of Rosie’s unsolved murder, and the four are still suspects. But when two of them die in suspicious circumstances, it seems that someone is pursuing their own brand of justice. For the remaining two, there is only one way to avoid becoming the next victim – find out who really killed Rosie all those years ago...