A Place of Execution, Val McDermid
A Place of Execution, Val McDermid
1 Rating(s)
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A Place of Execution

Author: Val McDermid

Narrator: Paddy Glynn

Unabridged: 14 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/16/2017


Synopsis

Winter 1963: two children have disappeared off the streets of Manchester; the murderous careers of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady have begun. On a freezing day in December, another child goes missing: thirteen-year-old Alison Carter vanishes from her town, an insular community that distrusts the outside world. For the young George Bennett, a newly promoted inspector, it is the beginning of his most difficult and harrowing case: a murder with no body, an investigation with more dead ends and closed faces than he'd have found in the anonymity of the inner city, and an outcome which reverberates through the years. Decades later he finally tells his story to journalist Catherine Heathcote, but just when the book is poised for publication, Bennett unaccountably tries to pull the plug. He has new information which he refuses to divulge, new information that threatens the very foundations of his existence. Catherine is forced to re-investigate the past, with results that turn the world upside down. A Greek tragedy in modern England, A PLACE OF EXECUTION is a taut psychological thriller that explores, exposes and explodes the border between reality and illusion in a multi-layered narrative that turns expectations on their head and reminds us that what we know is what we do not know.

About Val McDermid

One of Britain's most popular authors of contemporary crime fiction, Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community, read English at Oxford, then returned to Scotland to work as a journalist. She was National Bureau Chief on a national Sunday tabloid before quitting in 1991 to become a full-time novelist.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Baba on July 23, 2022

Thirteen year-old Alison Carter doesn't come home from walking her dog; in the very small tight knit Peak District (in the UK) community of Sarsdale, truly everyone knows or is related to everyone, a child abduction is so unheard of, especially as we're talking the winter of 1963! The very tight-lip......more

Goodreads review by PattyMacDotComma on November 01, 2019

3.5 ~ 4★ “The only thing he might have expected to find but hadn't was a bible. On the other hand, Scardale was so cut off from the rest of the world, they might still be worshipping the corn goddess here. Maybe the missionaries had never made it this far.” Scardale is such a remote English village th......more

Goodreads review by Barbara on November 14, 2021

3.5 stars This book is divided into two parts. In the first section, set in the early 1960s, a teenage girl disappears from a small English village and the police investigate. In the second section, set in 1998, a reporter writes a book about the mid-century incident. In 1963, the tiny hamlet of Scar......more

Goodreads review by Liz on March 10, 2019

Part of my 2019 "returning to old favourites" I'd forgotten just how utterly clever, compelling and brilliantly plotted this was. Lots of authors have attempted this type of unpredictable read since but this is the masterclass. Of course I knew what was coming this time which meant I read it in a who......more