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    The Distant Echo
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    The Distant Echo
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    The Distant Echo
    Audiobook14 hours

    The Distant Echo

    Written by Val McDermid

    Narrated by Tom Cotcher

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    OThe first novel in the bestselling Karen Pirie series

    The award-winning Number One bestseller and Queen of crime fiction Val McDermid carves out a stunning psychological thriller. The past is behind them, but what's still to come will tear them apart…

    Some things just won't let go.
    The past, for instance.
    That night in the cemetery.
    The girl's body in the snow.

    On a freezing Fife morning four drunken students stumble upon the body of a woman in the snow. Rosie has been raped, stabbed and left for dead in an ancient Pictish cemetery. And the only suspects are the four young men now stained with her blood.

    Twenty-five years later the police mount a ‘cold case' review of Rosie's unsolved murder and the four are still suspects. But when two of them die in suspicious circumstances, it seems that someone is pursuing their own brand of justice. For the remaining two there is only one way to avoid becoming the next victim – find out who really killed Rosie all those years ago…

    ‘A classic … McDermid pulls out all the stops. Impeccable' Guardian

    ‘A few more sly, old-fashioned whodunits like this and she'll join the sturdy ranks of the queens of crime, on course to become Dame Val or Baroness McDermid' Sunday Times

    ‘She has created some of the most appealing figures in current crime fiction. Val McDermid has used the crime genre to write a novel that, above everything else, celebrates life and loyalty' TLS

    ‘Another McDermid triumph' Observer

    ‘A powerful story of murder and revenge.' Sunday Telegraph
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateAug 6, 2015
    ISBN9781510006478
    Author

    Val McDermid

    Val McDermid is the author of many crime novels and has created the notable characters Lindsay Gordon, Karen Pirie, Kate Brannigan and Tony Hill. Her novels have been translated into forty languages and have sold over 16 million copies. Visit her online at ValMcDermid.com.

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    Reviews for The Distant Echo

    4/5

    405 ratings30 reviews

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    • 5/5
      An amazing story incredibly well written and brilliantly told!
    • 5/5
      Complex satisfying cold case of 4 friends implicated in murder of young Rosie by the rapist/sex offender Police Commissioner covering his tracks and son of the rape seeking revenge. A slow burn intro to the character of Karen Pirie which promises much more.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyed the narrator but it took me awhile to sort out the different characters as they all sounded a bit similar. The ending came as a complete surprise. I suspected someone else entirely.
    • 3/5
      Spannend und düster.
    • 5/5
      Loved loved reading this book. It's the makings of everything I love about small town crime and the lives that are bound by it. A fantastic read!
    • 5/5
      Excellent.Pacy, intriguing, surprising end. Kept me interested and wondering every minute.
    • 5/5
      In 1978, four young university students are suspects in the murder of nineteen year old Rosie Duff. With no real evidence against them or anyone else, suspicion would follow them and change their lives forever. Twenty-five years later, the case would be re-opened as a cold case. This time, however, they would begin dying under suspicious circumstances. Clearly someone has decided them guilty of Rosie's murder and is exacting retribution. I thought this book was very well written and easy to read. It held my interest until the very ending which was quite a surprise and very exciting. I loved all the characters and thought they were well-drawn and the plot was very unique. It wasn't too hard to guess the killer but I think the real purpose of Val McDermid writing the book was to show "the poisonous nature of suspicion and guilt and the reverberation of damage through the lives of people touched by murder." I don't think you can really consider this book as book 1 of the Karen Pirie series as it was written 5 years before the 2nd book and was probably intended to be a standalone. Karen Pirie was not in the book until the middle and the ending. The series therefore seems to me as an afterthought. I will, however, be reading the rest of the Karen Pirie series and I highly recommend this book to those who like mysteries with surprise endings.
    • 4/5
      I recently watched the tv adaptation of this book on Amazon Prime ("Karen Pirie"), and really liked it. I wanted to see what the books were like, so I picked this up on Kindle. It's very good but also very different from the tv series. It's so interesting what they change when they adapt books for tv. What surprised me the most was that Karen Pirie is barely present in the book. You meet her early on and then just see glimpses of her until the end when she emerges into the storyline. It reminded me of how Vera Stanhope does not appear until the last part of [The Crow Trap] in the first book in Anne Cleeve's beloved series. Anyway, this one deals with a cold case that is being revisited twenty-five years later because of advances in science and technology, and Karen Pirie is put in charge of going back through the original case files. The biggest problem is that the evidence has gone missing. I liked how twisty this one was. The writing was very good, and I love that the series is set in Scotland. I will definitely read the next one.
    • 5/5
      Val McDermid has a new series. Ok new for me. The Tony Hills books were great, and now with this first book in the Karen Pirie series Val McDermid just keeps getting better.
      This time out 4 friends walking home at 3 in the morning stumble across a dead girl on the side of a hill.
      Immediately they are treated like suspects.
      Half the book takes place around the time of the murder and half takes place 25 years later.
      What makes this author so good- up there with Michael Connelly and James Lee Burke is her story telling ability.
      For a lot of this book they is no action going on. B I t the weaving together the 4 friends and everyone else involved, made this book fly, and on kindle it was over 500 pages.
      If you like murder mysteries and haven’t read Val McDermid, try one of her books. There isn’t too much Scottish slang. And with Google you can look anything up.
    • 3/5
      A good whodunit, constantly guessing the killer of Rose throughout the book and also in the last half of the book working out who killed the suspects from the original crime.
    • 5/5
      It is safe to say that this is definitely among the very best crime novels that I have read so far. It is written so, so well. I just entered the lives of the main characters and I suffered with them, felt with them, hoped and feared with them. In the centre of the novel there is a group of four male high school friends who study in St Andrews. One snowy night after a party, they find the body of a young girl who was raped and murdered. From now on, they are crucial witnesses - and even suspects.The novel is not only about finding out who the killer is, but just as much about what the events do to these four young men and to their friendship. Trust, loyalty, truth - what binds us together, and what is the core of a human being when decade after decade goes by and circumstances change so much?After a leap of twenty-five years, when strange things start happening that seem connected to the murder, which still has not been solved and is under review as a cold case, these questions become even more important.
    • 4/5
      This is technically the first in the Karen Pirie series, but Pirie is only a minor character in the story. A cold case review brings back bad memories for four men who were students at St. Andrews 25 years ago, when they had the misfortune to stumble onto the not-quite-dead body of Rosie, a local barmaid of their acquaintance, while returning to their digs from a typical student bash. We are taken back to the investigation of Rosie's rape and murder; the suspicion that fell on the boys in the absence of any other likely perp; and then forward again to the new efforts to solve the case with modern forensic techniques. The pace is galloping, the psychological elements very well played, and the suspense nicely managed, although as I was reading I thought the author went one step too far. In the end I saw it was necessary for her resolution, and it isn't her fault she employed a plot element I absolutely HATE. I was fairly sure of the villain about 2/3 through, but McDermid kept me just enough off balance that I still entertained a couple other possibilities, and she did throw in a wee surprise before it was all sorted. Not often these days do I get so stuck into a book that I can read for hours at a stretch; this one did it for me.
    • 4/5
      Val McDermid has written four series and six novels. Her best known series is Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, with the first story, “The Mermaids Singing”, written in 1995 and the tenth written in 2017 “Insidious Intent”. “Distant Echo” (DE), 450 pages, is the first in the Scot police detective Karen Pirie series; Pirie plays a limited role in the story and clearly the idea for a series may have arisen after publication of DE. There are four more books in this series, and the most recent is “Broken Ground” (2018).DE begins 25 years earlier when four young college students on their way home after a night of drinking and partying discover a young local barmaid in a remote area, dying from a stab wound. They quickly become leading suspects and don’t help their case when soon caught in a lie about earlier activities that night. The victim’s older brothers quickly assume the young men’s guilt and seek revenge. The press is also suspicious and plants seeds of doubt in the community’s minds. Despite all the circumstances, there is no evidence, and the police are unable to bring charges. However, the four boys lives and dreams are shattered and the shadow over them never really disappears. And after 180 pages, the story leaps forward to the present day. As the anniversary of the barmaid’s murder approaches, two of the original four are killed in separate incidents. And a mysterious stranger arrives on the scene…..What I liked about DE – a very interesting plot. This is the too rare story that stays with you. Most crime fiction readers expect justice, and while the bad guy is once again caught in the final pages, there is no justice for the four college boys – and their families. The prose is excellent and the dialog particularly; McDermid has been writing a good long while and knows what she’s doing. I enjoyed all the descriptions of the Scottish locales. The climax was well done; the last few chapters ramped up to an exciting ending. Characters were well drawn, particularly the “supporting” ones – cops, grieving brothers, a grieving widow (and her lover!).What I didn’t like about DE – I thought the story dragged here and there; I felt that perhaps up to 100 of its 450 pages could have been chopped. I didn’t take a shine to the four boys, the center of the story, and I didn’t care enough for any one of them.This deserves a 3 ½ rating and it gets a lukewarm recommendation here. I will read other books in this series though – I think McDermid is that good.
    • 4/5
      Four friends are returning home after a night of revelry. Taking a shortcut through the local cemetery, they discover a new-dead woman. As three remain to comfort and try to help the woman, the fourth races off to get help from the local police. This sets into motion a series of events that will change these young men forever and haunt them the rest of their lives.The police are suspicious of the young men and begin to take their lives apart. Talking to their friends, searching their home and turning a blind-eye to local hoodlums taking their own justice – these actions mark the 4 men as suspects though the police can find no evidence that they were responsible, thus branding them in the minds of the townpeople as murderers.Now, 25 years later, the police department is performing a review of cold cases in the hope that advances in DNA analysis will finally solve these crimes. And, again, the men are considered suspects.This story was good though the local police force seemed more inept and bumbling than usual. It was also billed as #1 in the Karen Pirie series though she has a very small part in the story. The book was well-written and had a good pace. The author put out enough clues that you could solve along as the story unfolded (though the actual killer was kind of obvious early on)Rating: 3.75
    • 4/5
      [The Distant Echo] by Val McDermidKaren Pirie series Book #14 starsFrom The Book: It was a winter morning in 1978, that the body of a young barmaid was discovered in the snow banks of a Scottish cemetery. The only suspects in her brutal murder were the four young men who found her: Alex Gilbey and his three best friends. With no evidence but her blood on their hands, no one was ever charged.Twenty five years later, the Cold Case file on Rosie Duff has been reopened. For Alex and his friends, the investigation has also opened old wounds, haunting memories-and new fears. For a stranger has emerged from the shadows with his own ideas about justice. And revenge.When two of Alex's friends die under suspicious circumstances, Alex knows that he and his innocent family are the next targets. And there's only way to save them: return to the cold-blooded past and uncover the startling truth about the murder. For there lies the identity of an avenging killer.My Thoughts:I was supposed to be the first book in the Karen Pirie series but actually Karen had very little to do with the entire book. She never even made a showing until the second half of the book and then she was a ghostly part of the story. That aside...the book was a fairly good read. Not as good as McDermid's Tony Hill/Carol Jordan books but still very readable. I think if you hadn't been looking for Karen to make an appearance the story would have had much more appeal. The writing is very good...the story is plausible... and the main characters are well developed and realistic. You can't help wondering what anyone would do if they suddenly were thrown into a similar situation. It all comes together in the end, no strings left untied. I can recommend this book to anyone that loves a well told mystery...just don't think of it as a series.
    • 1/5
      I've given one of Val McDermid's books another try , but once more it didn't happen for me. I think I'm off Val McDermid for good...

      Predictable from beginning to end. Without giving away any spoilers, I think it's safe to say that the culprit is quite obvious...

      What I really don't like about McDermid's is her inability to draw us in. I just feel I'm reading an exercise on how to deceive the reader. She deliberately ommits vital peaces of information in order to lead us on. I say this in the worst possible sense ... I love (good) crime fiction (for instance, R. J. Ellory, Michael Connelly, etc) and everytime I try one of her books, I just feel plain cheated. I really don't care for whodunits, and when they're quite as unsatisfying as this one, by the end of the book, I feel I've wasted my time.

      Compare this book with the latest Ellory's book "A Dark and Broken Heart" (see my review) and you'll see what I mean.
    • 4/5
      Another solid thriller from McDermid.
    • 3/5
      Enjoyed the story line and the characterization but became just a bit unbelievable when we jumped to 25 years from the date of the original murder.
    • 5/5
      My first encounter with a McDermid novel; after reading this one, I rushed out and bought three others (including A Place of Execution, the TV miniseries of which I much enjoyed a few years ago). In 1978 four male St Andrews University students, best pals, the self-styled "Laddies fi Kirkcaldy", take a short cut on their drunken way home through the snow from a Christmas party and stumble across the still just alive body of a local barmaid; despite their best efforts, by the time help arrives the raped woman is dead. In succeeding months the four lads suffer persecution, sometime brutally violent, from the police and the locals, including the victim's thuggish brothers and their equally brainless friends. After all, since the students were the only ones known to have been on the scene as she died, they must be the killers, no?

      Now (2003) the inquiry is being reopened as part of a cold cases drive headed -- coincidentally -- by the officer who, as a young cop back in 1978, was the first to be informed by the students of the crime, and who played a part in that initial, fatally unsuccessful investigation; the fact that he knows the case, and the four students (all now successfully established in their different careers), seems helpful. But the reopening of the case has clearly triggered the original killer, keen the case should remain unsolved, or perhaps some vigilante seeking to avenge that long-ago death.

      I was absolutely spellbound throughout this longish book -- spellbound by the sheer storytelling and character depiction as well as by the convolutions of the plot. It's going to be difficult making myself pace the other McDermid novels I now own rather than read them all in a single gluttonous splurge.
    • 3/5
      McDermid does a good job here creating interesting characters, and setting up an interesting situation for them to negotiate. But the cliche bits--the serial killer, the too-dramatic deaths toward the end--really violate the integrity of that situation. Unfortunate. Still well worth reading for what McDermid does well.
    • 3/5
      (This review also appears on Amazon.co.uk)This is the third McDermid book I have read, and the second one I have actually enjoyed (I gave up on the dire `Trick or Treat!') and I am pleased to see it based in the authors native Scotland which really springs from the pages and adds a great sense of place to the story.The novel unfolds in the late 1970's as four students at St Andrews University stumble across the body of a young woman in a churchyard after a night out. Rosie Duff is clearly in a bad way, but when she later dies, suspicion immediately alights on the four young men who found her. There's no proof that they had any involvement in what happened, but no other suspects either- and for the next couple of decades that shadow of doubt is cast over the four friends. It is on the twenty fifth anniversary of the murder however when things take another turn for the worst- two of the men die in suspicious circumstances and the remaining men realise that someone is seeking revenge and that they must be next, unless they can find Rosie Duff's real killer...This was a very readable book that held my attention from beginning to end. I must agree with other reviewers that the characterisation is credible and the friendship between the main characters and their initial bond at the start of the novel is very well drawn. As events unfold, you can almost feel the closeness between the protagonists beginning to fray as suspicion alights on them and they almost start to turn on one another- and this was very well portrayed. I also enjoyed the different time periods depicted- Scotland in the 1970's had very different police procedures and attitudes to the 21st Century and this was interesting to read about, particularly in conjunction with Ziggy, who I think was an excellent character.My main criticism for this novel is that even though this is fiction and they were clearly devices needed for the plot, I really couldn't believe a) how unsympathetic the police were to the students' predicament and their willingness to tar them as suspects from the start and b) how incompetent the police actually were! Losing evidence? Come on!!! I must confess that the cliché aspect of that bit of plot irritated me a bit. Also, I felt that all the way through the book the sense of tension was invariably heightened, but then once the ending and resolution actually arrived it was all a bit of an anti-climax. Still, I didn't see the actual dénouement coming or whodunit- it was very neatly delivered, so top marks for that.Criticism aside, this was still a well paced thriller and admittedly a bit of a page turner that held my attention well enough. McDermid isn't the best thriller writer I've ever read, but this book was enjoyable enough and I am looking forward to trying more by her in future.
    • 5/5
      An excellent storyline bringing together a brutal murder from 1978 St Andrews to a 2003 "echo". Four students discover a dying girl on their way home from a party and fall under a suspicion which blights the rest of the lives as no-one is tried for the crime and the trail goes dead. Twenty-five years later a cold case review re-awakens the accusations made against the students and two suddenly die in suspicious circumstances. Several red herrings throughout but well plotted enough to fool me about the killer's identity. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      I think McDermid achieves more with her one-off characters in this book than some writers of crime fiction manage over the course of a detective’s serialised career. Other than the ‘Wire in the Blood’ series, this is my first Val McDermid book; not having had any of her stand-alone novels individually recommended to me, they just never made it onto my radar (seriously, I’m having that radar decommissioned) but even the appeal of Tony Hill and Carol Jordan as crime-fighters didn’t prepare me for the ease with which the author could get me to care for four disparate yet strongly-bonded friends who stumble onto a murder scene on a cold, snowy night in Fife. The fifth major character in this novel is suspicion – suspicion which links, bonds, causes rifts, upends lives and haunts them, until 25 years later the same four lads are still in the frame when the investigation re-emerges as a cold case. Only this time, they aren’t just being looked at. They’re being killed.I suppose I’ve read other crime fiction where innocent people fall under suspicion to the point of being imperilled, as the police follow leads, particularly where the detectives doggedly pursue the wrong person for most of the book, but the atmosphere of panic and depression is so artfully drawn out that it’s impossible not to emphasise with Alex, Mondo, Weird and Ziggy, even while the reader wonders which of them might have done it.The dénouement isn’t quite as unique. I don’t know if it was more of a shock in 2003 when it was published (I can’t remember when this particular trend in crime fiction began), but it’s satisfying enough in 2011, anyway.The Distant Echo might still be a puzzler for some, although even if you consider yourself a fair fictional villain-spotter, there’s a lot worth reading about this story beyond the answer, if you’re a fan of the genre, and it’s still definitely a page-turner (I must remember to review the next book I dislike as having ‘stuck together pages’).
    • 4/5
      Scottish - slow start but turns out to be a good story.
    • 4/5
      McDermid has written an absorbing book about 4 college students in England who stumble across a dead bar maid in a local cemetary in 1978. With no other suspects, they are high on the suspect list. However, no evidence is available to pin the murder on them. Twenty five years later, the cold case division reopens the case. In the interim, the barmaid illegitimate son, put into foster care, appears on the scene, prodding the police to find enough evidence to convict the 4 students.The book deftly switches between 1978 nad 2003 and describes both the events of the period as well as discussing the impact of suspicion on the students lives. The writing is done well. The suspense is there. Emotions run high.A good mystery. Makes me want to read more of Val McDermid.
    • 5/5
      1978 four friends leave a college party-heading back to the dorms via the quickest route possible and stumble onto the body of a dying girl. The friends quickly become the prime suspects in the crime, but protest their innocence. How do you prove that you haven't done something for which you are accused? The police believe they did the deed, the family of the dead girl agree, and the townspeople and college classmates concur. No solid evidence is found to prove the presumption, so they are never charged with the crime. Everyone thinks they've gotten away with murder. Flash forward to 2003 and with the advent of DNA the cold case is re-opened, but someone isn't waiting for the police to botch the investigation he/she has decided to punish the guilty. Never read Val McDermid, but now I'm hooked. This is a well written page turner.
    • 4/5
      Entertaining, complex murder mystery set in Scotland. Better than average who-done-it.
    • 3/5
      This murder mystery has a Scottish accent. Four university men are caught up in the homicide of a bar maid. Some twists and turns are predictable and some are not - none are annoying or insulting.The story is well told and not disjointed. I was able to read the story in bits and pieces over several days without getting lost.My only criticism is when the author becomes confused regarding the sleep patterns of a character. One specific night he is "feeling as if he had been asleep for minutes instead of hours" (p. 253) and then when describing a period of time taht was included the earlier description the character has "slept more deeply than he had since childhood" (p. 268.) Silly.Well, I guessed "who done it" . . . before the end, but that's okay.I will add author Val McDermid to my reading list.
    • 4/5
      Protagonist: Alex GilbeySetting: St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Scotland in 1978 and the present dayStandaloneFirst Line: "He always liked the cemetery at dawn."In 1978, young Rosie Duff's body was found in a remote corner of a cemetery in St. Andrews, Scotland by four drunken college students. Although the police were convinced that one of those students had to be Rosie's killer, no concrete evidence was ever found and no one was charged. In 2003 with the advances in DNA technology, the newly formed cold case unit reopens the Rosie Duff case, and those four former students begin to die one by one.Val McDermid is now one of my favorite authors, and she did it to me again in this book. The only quibble with The Distant Echo is that I knew who the killer was way too soon, which caused me to verbally castigate some of the characters! I have several other McDermid novels on the TBR shelves, and it's going to be difficult for me to stay away from them. She knows how to spin a yarn!
    • 1/5
      Very disappointing after having read an excellent A Place of Execution. The Distant Echo's first half holds promise but devolves into stereotyped characters and a contrived ending.