Advances in science and technology have meant that more cold cases than ever are getting solved. The latest, most sensational example was the arrest of architect Rex Heuermann in Long Island’s Gilgo Beach serial-murder case last summer. The three women were killed in 2009–10, but the initial investigation was botched by corruption and incompetence. A new task force identified Heuermann as a suspect last year by using DNA harvested from a pizza box and location data from cell phones to assemble a solid case against him. The arrest induced something of a public catharsis: however briefly, order was restored in a chaotic world, and justice apparently done gave the victims’ families some relief.
That need for wrongs to be righted, along with a fascination with forensics, explains the popularity of crime fiction focused on cold cases. One of the best of these series, written by Val McDermid, features the Historic Cases Unit (the Brits prefer this terminology to the slangy “cold case”) in Edinburgh, led by Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie. In the series’s seventh installment, the team find themselves at loose ends at the beginning of the pandemic. (Setting Past Lying during the coronavirus was a gutsy move, since the conventional wisdom is that pandemic books don’t sell. Luckily, the Scottish Queen of Crime ignored this.)
A few weeks into lockdown, Karen’s unit is tipped off to a potential cold case by a source at the National Library who’s cataloging the papers of a recently deceased crime writer. Among them is the manuscript of a novel that mirrors the facts of the disappearance of a young woman a year earlier. The two main characters are fierce chess adversaries, which makes Karen hesitant to take the manuscript literally. Chess might not be the only game being played here.
McDermid has a high old time satirizing Scotland’s crime-fiction scene, portraying it as a misogynist hive of gossip, backbiting, and awards envy. These mean boys and girls compare unfavorably with Karen, who’s secretly trying to help a Syrian refugee in her spare time.
McDermid outdoes herself with the thorny, semi-meta plot; even the book within a book, a device that can be tedious, is irresistible. Trying to figure out who’s playing whom while relishing McDermid’s behind-the-scenes take on Tartan Noir should keep readers up past their bedtimes.
Val McDermid has a high old time satirizing Scotland’s crime-fiction scene, portraying it as a misogynist hive of gossip, backbiting, and awards envy, in Past Lying.
There are plenty of cold-case TV dramas that linger on the grislier aspects of the genre, but the least exploitative, most soulful might be Unforgotten, which just returned to PBS’s Masterpiece for its fifth season after the departure of one of its principals. It follows a formula, but within that achieves an unusual depth of feeling.
Two lead detectives (Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar) head a London-based team that investigates historic murders. At the beginning of each season, human remains are unearthed, and a group of people connected to the victim emerge as witnesses or suspects. The show’s immersion in the lives of these characters is its great strength, exploring the collateral damage that an unsolved murder creates.
The quality of the acting is consistently remarkable; Tom Courtenay and Mark Bonnar won BAFTAs for their nuanced guest performances in Seasons One and Two, and Alex Jennings deserved one for his in Season Three.
Unfortunately, Nicola Walker, whose everywoman X factor and oceanic-green eyes make her the beating heart of anything she’s in, exited the series after the fourth season. This left the steady, empathetic Bhaskar to spar with a new boss, played by Sinéad Keenan, who is mainly irritable. Those ankle boots of Walker’s are tough to fill.
There are plenty of cold-case TV dramas that linger on the grislier aspects of the genre, but the least exploitative, most soulful might be Unforgotten.
There is no historic murder in English writer Caz Frear’s Five Bad Deeds, but the anonymous person tormenting anti-heroine Ellen Walsh seems to consider Ellen’s life one big cold case—or, actually, five. Which is odd because, on the surface, Ellen is a pretty normal 41-year-old woman. Admittedly things are complicated: her family, which includes a rich husband, toddler twins, a trying teenager, and a bitter ex-model sister, is chaotic; her tutoring job is more feel-good than remunerative; and her charming house in the tweedy village of Thames Hawley is about to undergo an unnecessary renovation.
Yes, Ellen is a 1-percenter, maybe a drama queen about trivial things, but hardly evil, so she is shocked to receive this note in the mail: “Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.... I’m going to teach you that lesson.”
More notes follow, and Ellen’s life begins to come undone as she mentally runs through her trespasses, trying to figure out who could have it in for her. Her sins are more venial than mortal; anyone who’s not a candidate for sainthood would find them relatable, or at least understandable.
But Ellen is a lousy detective, easily distracted, and clueless about how vulnerable she really is to the malign force that’s invaded her existence. She also lies, mostly to protect others, but ends up shooting herself in the foot more often than not.
Caz Frear, with her almost freakish gift for witty, rapid-fire dialogue and sharp observations, gives this portrait of a flawed woman targeted for destruction the tone of a screwball comedy, albeit an edgy one. I confess to not guessing the identity of Ellen’s tormentor, but belatedly realizing the clues were there all along, lurking in the quiet spaces among all that coruscating prose. Well played, Ms. Frear.
There is no historic murder in Caz Frear’s Five Bad Deeds, but the anonymous person tormenting the anti-heroine seems to consider her life one big cold case—or, actually, five.
While spies have to focus tirelessly on the present, they ignore the past at their own risk. In Anna Pitoniak’s outstanding new spy novel, The Helsinki Affair, there’s no doubt that C.I.A. agent Amanda Cole, a second-generation spy, is aware of this.
She feels like she’s dying on the vine at the drowsy Rome station until a nervous Russian drops by claiming to have important information. Amanda, who can read people like a magician, thinks the man’s story is credible, but her boss waves it off. The ensuing disaster results in Amanda being named station chief at the tender age of 40.
Being the daughter of a spy is both a blessing and a curse for Amanda, whose father, now mostly out of the game, comes into possession of valuable intel and passes it on to her. But there’s a snag involving her dad’s old posting in Helsinki that she just can’t ignore.
Pitoniak is off to a promising start with this smart, well-paced, and refreshingly female-centric thriller. Amanda operates at the quietly feminist end of the spy-fiction spectrum, not a Mata Hari or one of James Bond’s sexy adversaries but a strategic thinker well trained in the clandestine arts. In what there is of her personal life, she’s a straight arrow who’s left behind the aimless hedonism of her youth.
Pitoniak wryly makes Amanda’s rejection of fashion a thing, since she can’t look too distinctive. A spy who favors Talbots and J. Crew is a spy after my own heart—some sacrifices are worth making if you’re going to save the world.
Lisa Henricksson reviews mystery books at AIR MAIL. She lives in New York City