Val McDermid, A Place of Execution (1999)

I discovered Val McDermid last year when I read Still Life, and I was more than happy to discover that she had written a lot, and so I could plunge into her back catalogue for more happy discoveries. But if I had started with A Place of Execution, I might not have had the same opinion at all. It’s even difficult for me to consider that it’s the same writer who wrote this one and the series with DCI Karen Pirie. Yes, 20 years make a lot of difference for the career of a writer.

“A Place of Execution” comes with the commendation of the Edgar Award and being ingenious. Ingenious it is indeed, I’m not disputing this. But 600+ pages, people! It really picks up after 200 pages, that’s plenty of time I could have given up. But for the good experience I had with that author, I would never have stuck around.

For two third of the book, we are in 1963 in a small village of Derbyshire in the English Peak District. On a bleak winter night, 13-year-old Alison Carter goes out to walk her dog after returning from school. She will never be seen again. The police stumbles upon a tightly-knit village, a few farmers houses gathered around the manor house, and people don’t talk to outsiders. There are few clues for Detective Inspector George Bennet. It’s his first big case and he will become obsessed with Alison’s disappearance, all the more as his own wife is expecting their first baby.

The last third of the book is set in 1998, when a journalist wants to publish a book about Alison’s case and secrets will be finally be uncovered. To say more would probably be spoilery. The plot got me hooked, but the execution (ah) left me a bit cold because of the pacing. The shock of the end twist was lessened because I had had ample time to guess and start in the right direction (I had not guessed it fully, but I was close). I wish the book had been edited of at least 100-150 pages.

Last remark: what with the cigarettes? Yes people smoked a lot in the 1960s and still some in the late 1990s, but here hardly a page goes by without someone taking a cigarette, giving one (pack!) to a witness. Secondary smoking via a book? That wouldn’t be surprising, with all that nicotine… I’m not for removing all traces of historically accurate smoking, but I would have edited that part down.