New Territory

I'm a good way through Val McDermid's A Place of Execution and enjoying it immensely. Wasn't sure how I'd take to her stuff since I'm not a particular devotee of tv's Wire In The Blood which derives from some of her novels - though I do find it reasonably watchable when I'm in the mood. But this novel strikes me as vastly superior to that sort of generic serial-killer stuff and I'm keen to read some more, possibly even the Tony Hill novels on which the telly series is based.

Amongst the many virtues of A Place of Execution is its tremendous sense of period and place: basically my part of the north of England at the time of the Moors Murders - which sort of feature as a sideline to the main story. Oddly I'm feeling a sense of mourning for all those poor lost kids. I remember John Kilbride's picture being on display in the window at Denton Police Station seemingly for ever. He would have been just a couple of years older than me, approaching sixty, had he lived. A rich lifetime lost.

I'm uneasy at anything that uses the deaths of children as a kind of entertainment. Ms McDermid's novel doesn't, I'm very happy to say.