By Bron Sibree for the Sunday Times
The Skeleton Road
Val McDermid (Little Brown)
****
It’s an audacious novelist who can sheet home the horrors of the Balkan War within the guise of a Scottish crime novel. But then Val McDermid has always gone where few dare. So it’s no surprise that her new standalone, The Skeleton Road, leads us from a seemingly run-of-the-mill cold case murder investigation in Edinburgh into the dark terrain of the Balkan War and its terrible secrets. This is, after all, the very same novelist who hesitated for all of “30 seconds” before accepting the daunting challenge of reimagining Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (as part of the Austen Project, which tasks six contemporary writers with new versions of Austen classics), and then declared: “I’m only I’m ever comfortable when I take on something that’s a hiding to nothing.”
Give her half a chance and McDermid will also ’fess up to “getting bored very easily,” which is why she alternates writing novels in her famous Dr Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series, not to mention her radio dramas, children’s books, non-fiction, short stories and, of course, Lindsay Gordon and Kate Brannigan novels, adding up to more than 36 works in all.
For all her success, however, McDermid insists she would struggle to find a publisher today. “These days where you’re judged entirely on the strength of your sales. It’s much more about hitting the ground running, and lot of writers don’t, they take a long time to build up to speed. Ian Rankin and I always used to joke with each other that it had taken us 10 years to become an overnight success.”
The Skeleton Road reintroduces detective Karen Pirie – a character who appeared in her standalones The Distant Echo (2003) and The Darker Domain (2008) – and is based on the experiences of two women whom McDermid greatly admires. One is Kathy Wilkes, a now-deceased British academic, whose experiences of living in Dubrovnik during its siege kindled her interest. The other is Sue Black, one of Britain’s leading forensic anthropologists, who headed up the British forensic team in Kosovo and is now one of McDermid’s key advisors. The author is fastidious in giving credit to the many experts she consults, and says listening to Black speak of her “heartbreaking experiences” confirmed her desire to write a work of fiction that “encompassed the ambiguities of the Balkan conflict.”
“For me the writing process always requires patience,” says McDermid. “It begins with a scattergun of bits and pieces that start to come together. It’s almost like I tell myself stories till I find one that works.” She’s also quite conscious of a recurring theme in her standalones: the past coming back and poisoning the present. “It’s a very potent one for a writer. We’ve all got our own wee skeletons locked away and it makes for good dramatic storytelling.”
McDermid’s superbly crafted novels owe as much of their potency to her characterisation as they do to intricate plotting, reflecting her belief that “that all good fiction, no matter whether it’s genre or literary fiction, stands or falls on the quality of the characterisation.” An engaging conversationalist, McDermid is also proactive in supporting new and talented crime writers and cites chapter and verse on trends in crime fiction. “It’s so exiting to see how many possibilities there still seem to be for the crime novel. It’s very exciting to be working in this genre, still. I don’t think the quality has ever been higher.”
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Book details
- The Skeleton Road by Val McDermid
EAN: 9781408704585
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