Published 23rd October 2025 by Sphere.
From the cover of the book:
The truth is buried just beneath the surface . . .When torrential rain causes a landslide on a motorway in Scotland, it reveals a crime scene: someone hid a body in the tarmac eleven years before. Journalist Sam Nimmo had been the prime suspect in the murder of his fiancée when he disappeared, and now DCI Karen Pirie and her Historic Cases Unit must find out who buried him, and why.
Meanwhile, in Edinburgh, new evidence reopens a closed case and the accidental death of a hotel manager starts to look like murder. But what did Tom Jamieson's book club have to do with his demise - and what will they do to keep their secrets?
Karen and her team begin to untangle a web of lies, one that connects their murder cases with Scotland's rich and powerful. They will be tested to their limits - and possibly beyond . . .
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Torrential rain leads to a landslide, and the discovery of a body buried in a motorway embankment. It turns out to be the remains of journalist Sam Nimmo, a person of interest believed to have fled Scotland after killing his pregnant girlfriend eleven years ago. Meanwhile, another cold case is reopened when the brother of dead hotel manager, Tom Jamieson, flies in from New Zealand insisting his brother's death was not an accident.
DCI Karen Pirie's Historic Cases Unit is back, with two tricky cold cases to solve. Deftly tugging at the threads of new leads, Karen, Jason and Daisy find themselves travelling all over the Scottish landscape, and to foreign climes, trying to establish who killed Sam Nimmo, and whether or not Tom Jamieson was in fact murdered.
Each member of the team calls on their special skills in this gripping new instalment of the series - Karen calling in old favours (and rubbing people up the wrong way), Jason doggedly getting to grips with sifting information, and Daisy competing with Jason to get into Karen's good books (when she is not in search of pastries). Their teamwork gradually pays off with leads that take them deep into past misdeeds related to Scotland's political landscape, the murky world of gambling syndicates, and the cloak and dagger shenanigans of a secretive book club that appears to do more than chat about literary gems.
As is McDermid's forte, the little pieces of the puzzles come together beautifully, and she keeps you absolutely transfixed as the story plays out in a masterclass of plotting. Meaty themes abound, especially in relation to sexual abuse, corruption in the highest echelons, and the controversial relationships between powerful figures, politics, and journalism. There are lovely reflections on the post-Covid world too.
Plenty of grit; authentic storylines of love, loss, grief and tragedy; with fabulous settings; and a cast to die for make the Karen Pirie books some of my absolute favourites to disappear into. I could not have loved it more.
Silent Bones is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats.
Thank you to Sphere for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.
About the author:
Val has been chair of the judges for the Wellcome Book Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize, and has served as a judge for the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Man Booker Prize and the Royal Society Book Prize. She is the recipient of eight honorary doctorates and is an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford. She is a visiting professor in the Centre of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand. Among her many awards are the CWA Diamond Dagger recognising lifetime achievement and the Theakston's Old Peculier award for Outstanding Contribution to Crime Writing. Val is also an experienced broadcaster and much-sought-after columnist and commentator across print media.
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