The Distant Echo

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Val McDermid, The Distant Echo

Alex, Ziggy, Weird and Mondo were four Scottish friends who knew each other since childhood and were studying at St Andrews university; they were known as the Laddies fi' Kirkcaldy. One day, they discovered a dying young woman in the cemetery: she was Rosie Duff, waitress in a local pub. Unfortunately, by the time rescue got there, Rosie had already died. The four witnesses became suspects, and the gruesome discovery they made that night changed their lives forever...

Twenty-five years later a cold case review reopens the Rosie Duff's case. At the same time, someone is expressing his own idea of justice by killing two of the four friends within two weeks. Alex knows that the only way to save his life is to race against the clock and investigate himself in order to discover who really killed Rosie Duff...

The bad news is: I knew who the killer was very early on, and so will probably every mystery buff. That's what happens when one reads too many mysteries: I guess there are only so many possible combination of murderer, motive and means of killing. The ending of the previous Val McDermid's novel I read (A Place of Execution) came as a surprise, this one didn't...

However, even if I tend to despise such novels (reading 500 pages when you know the truth by page 50 can seem a bit of a waste of time), I loved the chilling atmosphere, the characters, and the Scottish touch so much that it didn't bother me as much to know who the killer was.. One loves a book for different reasons. I think the relationship between the four Laddies fi' Kirkcaldy was really interesting, how they individually reacted when confronted to serious trouble, how suspicion came between them and threatened their friendship without ever breaking the thread completely, the different ways they chose to cope, and mostly and how friendship ultimately triumphed...

The Distant Echo reminded me of other books about a group of childhood friends, such as Stephen King's Dreamcatcher. About Dreamcatcher, King said in an interview that it wasn't about horror but about people and the relationships they have with one another. The same could be said about McDermid's The Distant Echo: it is not so much a mystery as a novel about relationships...

Rating:

By Val McDermid:

McDermid, Val (1987) Report For Murder

McDermid, Val (1989) Common Murder

McDermid, Val (1991) Final Edition

McDermid, Val (1992) Dead Beat

McDermid, Val (1993) Union Jack

McDermid, Val (1993) Kick Back

McDermid, Val (1994) Crackdown

McDermid, Val (1994) A Suitable Job for a Woman (Non Fiction)

McDermid, Val (1995) Clean Break

McDermid, Val (1995) The Mermaids Singing

McDermid, Val (1996) Blue Genes

McDermid, Val (1996) Booked For Murder

McDermid, Val (1997) The Wire in the Blood

McDermid, Val (1997) The Writing on the Wall and Other Stories (Short Stories)

McDermid, Val (1998) Star Struck

McDermid, Val (1999) A Place of Execution

McDermid, Val (2000) Killing the Shadows

McDermid, Val (2002) The Last Temptation

McDermid, Val (2003) The Distant Echo

Links:

Val McDermid Official Web Site