Tuesday, September 21, 2021

A Darker Domain

Since we last met her, Karen Pirie is now the Detective Chief Inspector in the CCRT- the department dealing with cold cases. In A Darker Domain, Karen and Detective Sergeant Phil Parhatka are trying to solve two cold cases - one unofficially.

When Misha walks into the police station to report a missing person, she is transferred to Karen's department as the 'missing person' disappeared twenty-two years previously during the Miners' Strike of 1984. It was believed by his family and the local community that he had deliberately disappeared to Nottingham with five of the local workers. Consequently no one wanted anything to do with him. Misha needs him found as her son has a rare blood disease and her father's blood may be able to save him. When Karen decides to investigate the disappearance of Mick Prentice she discovers more than she anticipated.

Meanwhile Sir Broderick Maclennan Grant has demanded that DCI Pirie should further investigate the murder of his daughter, Catriona, and the disappearance of his grandson, Adam, also twenty- two years previously. The case has been re-opened as a journalist on holiday in Italy recognised a poster associated with the original crime in a deserted house. She also noticed recent blood stains on the floor of the house.

The sections describing the two two cases are interwoven, as are the time frames of events in 1984 and 2007. Descriptions of events during the 1984 Miners' Strike feature in the novel as Karen and Phil work to discover the truth.

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