A Darker Domain

Don't miss the British mystery series "Karen Pirie" on BritBox! Season 2--based on A Darker Domain--premieres October 2, 2025!

A New York Times Notable Crime Book of the Year - A Finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize

"A thrilling story with heartbreaking questions of social justice and history." --Seattle Times

The New York Times calls Val McDermid, "As smooth a practitioner of crime fiction as anyone out there...the best we've got." Time spent with her extraordinary thriller, A Darker Domain, will prove that it's true. Set in Scotland, McDermid's brilliant exploration of loyalty and greed intertwines the past and present.

Fife, Scotland, 1984. Mick Prentice abandons his family at the height of a politically charged national miners' strike to join the strikebreakers down south. Despised and disowned by friends and relatives, he is not reported missing until twenty-three years later.

Fife, Scotland, 1985. Kidnapped heiress Catriona Maclennan Grant is killed and her baby son vanishes when the ransom payoff goes horribly wrong. In 2008, a tourist in Tuscany stumbles upon dramatic new evidence that reopens the investigation.

Already immersed in the Prentice affair, Detective Karen Pirie, newly appointed head of the Cold Case Review Team, wants to make her mark with this second unsolved 1980s mystery. But two decades' worth of secrets are leading Pirie into a dark domain of violence and betrayal--a place darker than any she has previously entered.

VAL McDERMID is the internationally bestselling author of more than twenty crime novels. She has won the CWA Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; her novels have been selected as New York Times Notable Books and have been Edgar Award finalists. She was the 2010 recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Crime Writing. More than 10 million copies of her books have been sold around the world. She lives in the north of England. Visit her website at www.valmcdermid.com.