The Distant Echo [Paperback]

Bestselling, award-winning author Val McDermid delivers her most stunning story yet inThe Distant Echo---an intricate, thought-provoking tale of murder and revenge

Four in the morning, mid-December, and snow blankets St. Andrews School. Student Alex Gilbery and his three best friends are staggering home from a party when they stumble upon the body of a young woman. Rosie Duff has been raped, stabbed and left for dead in the ancient Pictish cemetery. The only suspects are the four young students stained with her blood.

Twenty-five years later, police mount a cold case review. Among the unsolved murders they're examining is that of Rosie Duff. But someone else has his own idea of justice. One of the original quartet dies in a suspicious house fire and soon after, a second is killed. Alex fears the worst. Someone is taking revenge for Rosie Duff. And it might just save his life if he can uncover who really killed Rosie all those years ago.

Val McDermidgrew up in a Scottish mining community and then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years and is now a full-time writer and lives in South Manchester. In 1995, she won the Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year. Her novel,A Place of Execution, won aLos Angeles TimesBook Prize, was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel, and named aNew York TimesNotable Book of the Year.

Cunningly plotted...McDermid administers the venom drop by drop...Individually the characters are sensitively drawn. Collectively, they present the inscrutable face of closed-off communities so terrified of change they would kill for peace. New York Times Book Review

This absorbing psychological novel of revenge shows British author McDermid at the top of her form...outstanding pacing, character and plot development, plus evocative place descriptions, make this another winner. Publishers Weekly (starred review)

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