Why the body with the buried bikes?

Val McDermid is a writing phenomenon. She was born in Fife, Scotland, a mining community, in 1955. She was eight when the East Wemyss coal mine near her home caught fire. The disaster, which killed nine men, gave her an early understanding of fear and loss. Also, her childhood habit of telling scary stories to her friends in the seaside caves near her home started her on the path of making up frightening tales.

After becoming the first student from a Scottish state school to enter St Hilda’s College, Oxford, she became a journalist, working for the Scottish tabloid the Daily Record, and later, the Daily Mirror Group, on the northern desk of the Sunday People. Her career as a reporter included being beaten up by 80s wrestling legend Big Daddy, as well as an unsettling encounter with Jimmy Savile who was eventually revealed as a predatory sex offender with 400 to 500 victims—ranging in age from 5 to 75—over fifty hears. Saville inspired one of her most notorious villains.

Her experiences covering tragedies like Lockerbie (the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing) and Hillsborough (a stadium crush that killed 97 fans) finally pushed her to leave tabloid journalism in 1991 and write fiction full-time, although she had been writing fiction.  Her first mystery Report for Murder was published in 1987.

When she started, British crime fiction often seemed to her to be excessively middle-class and polite. She was determined to do something different, writing punchy and contemporary stories that would draw on her journalistic background. She believes that crime fiction can hold a mirror up to society: “I want to write a novel that people will enjoy but will also give them pause.”

She has now written over 40 books in five series and isn’t ready to stop: “As long as the ideas are still there, as long as the passion and enthusiasm is still there, I'll be writing. And what else would I do?” Broken Ground (2018) is the fifth of eight in the Karen Pirie series. 

An American couple have come to a remote Highland peat bog  to hunt for a treasure her grandfather said he buried at the end of WWII. They have managed to find two brand new Indian motorcycles, but buried with them is a body. Who is it? Why was he shot? Moreover, the body has not been buried for 70 years, he was added sometime after the motorcycles. Cold case detective Karen Pirie has a challenge.

Broken Ground is smoothly written with plasuible characters, none of whom are TSTL—too stupid to live. McDermid's ability to change points of view smoothly keeps the story hurtling right along. A professional job by a professional.