The Hook - Val McDermid is one of my adopted authors at my hometown public library. I really love the stand-alones and non-fiction McDermid writes but have dipped in and out of her series for years. McDermid is an outstanding author who may just be the Queen of Crime after having lost Ruth Rendell and P.D. James. In alternate chapters we meet Gabriel Abbott, a young man with mental health issues. He suffers from periodic episodes of paranoia & has always been a solitary guy. When he was a child his mother was killed in a plane crash that was unofficially blamed on the IRA. Now he lives alone in Kinross & carefully follows a daily routine until the morning he’s found dead on a park bench.

Coupled with this case,is the recent death of one Gabriel Abbott. A young man, whose life was derailed by the very sudden death of his mother,Caroline,and her dearest friend,Ellie, Gabriel's body is found on a park bench with a gun in his hand.Karen as a character, well, you can’t help but dig in deep right alongside her – her way of dealing with personal tragedy, her way of rampaging through the white noise towards the truth of the matter and her ever growing relationships with those around her just give a hugely gripping anchor to the wider narrative, where in the mystery elements Val McDermid gives your brain a work out. All-in-all, an excellent read which I highly recommend. I'm hoping this series will have a long run. Karen,grieving the death of her work and life partner,Phil,is sceptical of the coincidence of the two deaths and begins an investigation of her own. While the mysteries behind these crimes play a substantive role, DCI Karen Pirie is the star of this series. Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie, leading the Cold Case Unit has stumbled upon a small plane crash some 20 years ago with all four passengers killed. Forward to current day and it appears the son of one of the victims either committed suicide or was murdered. Karen is also involved in another cold case of a young girl who was brutally murdered with no suspects in sight until DNA emerges from a crash victim. The same clues will be offered many times throughout the chapters, along with forcing the reader to try to understand why other officials in both cases want Karen to stop all the investigating work. Val McDermid has many fans that enjoy her style of writing.

In The Press and Journal, Roddy Brooks noted the determination of the main character and said that McDermid was a writer at the height of her game. [4] Well, it's routine now.' Sergeant Torrance didn't sound like a man who thought that was a good use of Police Scotland's budget. What superlatives are there left to describe the phenomenon that is the multi award-winning McDermid? . . . Told with McDermid’s legendary verve and eye for detail, it grabs the reader by the throat and never lets go.”— Daily Mail (UK) An] engaging new novel...McDermid’s 30th novel offers fascinating insights into the ethical dilemmas thrown up by advances in forensic science”― Sunday Times (UK) Scottish crime writer Val McDermid’s 30th novel, is a suspenseful thriller called Out of Bounds, with Little, Brown – AVAILABLE NOW!

When I started to read it,I felt that sweet sensation,that undeniable tingle down my spine and knew,yet again,that I was onto a winner!! Without a doubt, this is a book all crime fans will love. It starts in a bizarre way and if you haven’t read any of the other novels in this series, it could be confusing but keep with it. This is a book that can be read in silo of the others because other than the story-line of how her boyfriend dies, nothing else is carried forward from what I can see, so don’t be afraid to read Out of Bounds as a standalone novel.

Is Gabriel's death a straight forward suicide as it appears,or is there indeed a more sinister explanation for his death?

At the end of chapter 3, I’m told I’m reading about DCI Karen Pirie, and then I remember what happened in the last book. I re-read the chapter because it defines who Karen is now. This is one reason why I enjoy Val McDermid’s books. She surprises me. There's also a strand in the book about some of the Syrian refugees who have come to Scotland fleeing from the horrors in their own country. McDermid handles this very well, showing them not as potential terrorists, rapists, murderers or religious fanatics, but as normal people who have seen and experienced terrible things, but survived, and who now want to find a way to build new lives for themselves and their families in a safer place. Reviewing Val McDermid is becoming a tough job, at some point you run out of superlatives, you repeat yourself and can’t really think of any other way of saying that the novels are top notch brilliantly written gems of crime fiction and if you are a crime fiction fan you should just read them all. Fairly sure I’ve just repeated myself again from any number of the last few times I’ve reviewed.