Silent Bones
Val McDermid, Sphere, £10.49

SILENT BONES is Val McDermid’s eighth novel featuring DCI Karen Pirie and her team, who make up Edinburgh’s Historic Cases Unit (HCU). So far, two of the Karen Pirie Novels, The Darker Domain and The Distant Echo, have been adapted for television.

Silent Bones is a political thriller, touching upon the corrupt and sordid side of Scottish politics.

The novel begins with a mud-slide which unearths the body of a murdered investigative journalist. Meanwhile a hotel manager, whose death was originally believed to be an accident, soon turns out to be suspicious. The HCU soon discover the two deaths to be interlinked. And while unearthing the cover-up there arrives a violent rape at a pro-independence event, as well as betting and match-fixing scams featuring a shady elite book club called the Justified Sinners.    

The Justified Sinners, a reference to the 1824 novel by James Hogg, base their ideology on the concept of Calvinist Predestination whereby members of the elect are able to commit whatever sins they wish as they are guaranteed a place in heaven.

This implies an obvious criticism of the theology that dominates the Free Church of Scotland. It also resonates with the current Epstein files scandal, where men from elite backgrounds engage in criminal and degenerate behaviour, including paedophilia. The Justified Sinners seems more like a masonic lodge than a book club, that potential members would literally kill to join.

Meanwhile DCI Pirie and her team come to life as real characters by weaving their complex personal lives into the story. Both of her assistants, Detective Sergeants Jason Murray and Daisy Mortimer manage to employ their partners in the investigation. Karen Pirie herself, a single woman in her thirties, ends a relationship with her Syrian refugee lover.  

This backstory is an example of McDermid’s liberalism: she views the Assad government as the epitome of evil and portrays the new regime, cobbled together from various al-Qaida affiliates, as an opportunity to rebuild the country. Like many liberals, McDermid overlooks the persecution of religious minorities, not to mention the privatisation of national assets and rapprochement with the murderous Israeli state by the new regime.  

The novel also delves into the differences between English and Scottish law. In England, an arrest must be necessary for specific reasons. In Scotland, an officer can arrest if they have “reasonable grounds to suspect” an offence was committed.

Silent Bones is thoroughly well written and a great thriller, but is also testimony to the author’s liberalism. McDermid sees corruption and degenerate behaviour as something that can be rooted out rather than an integral part of capitalism. Again, this misconception is a flaw of liberalism.