Read by Tom Cotcher

"Narrator Tom Cotcher's strong performance captures listeners' attention in this intense introduction to the Karen Pirie series." - AudioFile Magazine This "cunningly plotted" (New York Times) thriller is coming to Britbox this October! Bestselling, award-winning author Val McDermid delivers her most stunning story yet in The Distant Echo-an intricate, thought-provoking tale of murder and revenge. Four in the morning, mid-December, and snow blankets St. Andrews School. Student Alex Gilbery and his three best friends are staggering home from a party when they stumble upon the body of a young woman. Rosie Duff has been raped, stabbed and left for dead in the ancient Pictish cemetery. The only suspects are the four young students stained with her blood. Twenty-five years later, police mount a cold case review. Among the unsolved murders they're examining is that of Rosie Duff. But someone else has his own idea of justice. One of the original quartet dies in a suspicious house fire and soon after, a second is killed. Alex fears the worst. Someone is taking revenge for Rosie Duff. And it might just save his life if he can uncover who really killed Rosie all those years ago. A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books. Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community and then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years and is now a full-time writer and lives in South Manchester. In 1995, she won the Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year. Her novel, A Place of Execution, won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel, and named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. "Cunningly plotted...McDermid administers the venom drop by drop...Individually the characters are sensitively drawn. Collectively, they present the inscrutable face of closed-off communities so terrified of change they would kill for peace." -New York Times Book Review "This absorbing psychological novel of revenge shows British author McDermid at the top of her form...outstanding pacing, character and plot development, plus evocative place descriptions, make this another winner." -Publishers Weekly (starred review) "If you still haven't absorbed the fact that Val McDermid is writing at the top of anyone's game, here's another chance to join the celebration...her clean, crisp writing, especially about crime science, might just remind you of the early books of P.D. James." -Chicago Tribune "McDermid, whose reputation and popularity are growing incrementally with each new book, is very like P.D. James in her masterful mixing of forensic science with brisk plots and in-depth characterization." -Booklist (star review)

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