Past Lying
- Published
- 1 January 2023
- Pages
- 464
- ISBN-13
- 9780802161499
- Type
- novel
About this book
Number 7 in the Karen Pirie series, Past Lying was published in 2023, a 3-year gap after Still Life, running 464 pages and continuing Val McDermid's pattern of decades-old crimes resurfacing to test Karen's standing among colleagues who underestimate her.
Key facts about Past Lying
Val McDermid wrote Past Lying, a novel on our list. It has been out since 2023. The book has 464 pages.
We list 2 editions of this novel. Since each edition has its own ISBN, search for 9780802161499 to find the main one.
Past Lying is book 7 of 8 in the Karen Pirie series. The series has 8 published books. However, the series starts with The Distant Echo (2003). Silent Bones is the latest book in the series with a full release date, out on 23 October 2025.
Additionally, Val McDermid writes Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan and Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, plus 1 more series. Those series sit on our crime fiction shelf. Meanwhile, This Door of the Seas is the latest published Val McDermid book on file, from 6 August 2026.
About Val McDermid
Val McDermid is a Scottish crime writer whose career spans nearly four decades and five distinct series, making her one of the most prolific and structurally ambitious authors working in British crime fiction. See every Val McDermid book in order.
Its place in Karen Pirie
Past Lying is book 7 in the Karen Pirie series. It follows Still Life. It is followed by Silent Bones. See the full Karen Pirie reading order.
Karen Pirie starts the series as a detective constable assigned to Scotland's Historic Cases Unit -- a backwater posting for cold cases nobody expects to be solved -- and grows across eight books into one of British crime fiction's most durable working-class investigators, promoted, sidelined, reinstated, and repeatedly proven right by colleagues who underestimate her. The opening novel, The Distant Echo (2003), reopens a decades-old student murder in St Andrews; from there the series keeps returning to the same…
Editions
- edition · unknown publisher · — · ISBN 9780802161499
- edition · unknown publisher · — · ISBN 9781408729090