The Skeleton Road
- Published
- 1 January 2014
- Pages
- 423
- ISBN-13
- 9780751551280
- Type
- novel
About this book
The Skeleton Road, written by Val McDermid, is the third entry in the Karen Pirie series, released in 2014 at 423 pages, a 6-year gap after A Darker Domain, continuing the series' pattern of old crimes that don't stay buried.
Key facts about The Skeleton Road
Val McDermid wrote The Skeleton Road, a novel on our list. It has been out since 2014. The book has 423 pages.
We list 3 editions of this novel. Since each edition has its own ISBN, search for 9780751551280 to find the main one.
The Skeleton Road is book 3 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
The Skeleton Road is book 3 in the Karen Pirie series. It follows A Darker Domain. It is followed by Out of Bounds. 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 9780751551280
- edition · unknown publisher · — · ISBN 9780802123091
- edition · unknown publisher · — · ISBN 9780802124210