It is 1963, the Beatles are becoming wildly popular in England, and the Swinging Sixties are about to change the post-war Western world. But in the village of Scardale in the Peaks District of Derbyshire, a desolate area beloved of hikers and climbers, nothing has changed for hundreds of years. The village has remained small and insular--most villagers are related, and the most common second names are Carter and Lomas. When Alison Carter, aged 13, disappears while walking her dog, the case is given to a young detective inspector named George Bennett. As Bennett gets to know the families in the village and their concerns, he realizes that this case is not as simple as it first seems. The villagers seem to be closing ranks, and Bennett suspects they may be protecting one of their own. Central to his investigation are Alison's mother and her husband. When Ruth Carter remarried, she chose Philip Hawkin, an outsider who is now the current squire of the village. As Alison's stepfather, he raises all kinds of red flags for Bennett. But so does Alison's close relationship with her cousin Charlie who, too conveniently, it seems, finds a vital clue.

All this is complicated by the fact that the police and the villagers cannot find Alison's body; there are also other disappearances in the area which may or may not be connected. To reveal more about this riveting mystery would be to give too much away. McDermid takes the reader through a maze of conflicting facts and theories, and when Bennett, with the help of local police, solves the case, the real story is only just beginning--especially for Bennett, who will question not only his own part in solving this case, but ultimately the profession he has chosen. --Otto Penzler

Product Description
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.

The mystery takes place in the early 1960s in the small
close-knit northern village of Scardale-- a community that appears to
be cut off from the modern world. A young 13 year old girl, Alison
Carter, has gone missing. The back drop to this is the disappearance
of two other children from other northern towns. Tensions mount as
the police try to figure out if there is some kind of link between the
three cases, and if there is a mad man at work; or if Alison's
disappearance is a one off and the work of someone closer to home and
equally sinister. DCI George Bennett, who heads the
search/investigation for the missing girl, realises that he's not only
facing a time constraint to finding her alive but also the insular
distrusting attitude of the villagers, who may because of their
suspicious natures be hindering the investigation.

The book is
divided into two parts. The first section deals with the police
investigation of Alison's disappearance; and later as they begin to
doubt ever finding her alive, the search for her killer. We also get a
look at how the police put their case together for the Crown, and the
trial. The second part of the book takes place in the late 1990s when,
a reporter, Catherine Heathcote, decides to write a book about
Alison.

I was totally engrossed with this book. Cooking and eating
dinner took a definite backseat as I delved into the twists and turns
of the novel. And there was a plot twist unlike anything I've ever
read before. I really enjoyed this book immensely and recommend it
highly to anyone to enjoys mysteries. Sadly, novels of this caliber do
not come often enough. This is a definite gem, and worthy of the five
star rating.



Sure about turning off the light?   September 15, 2000
 39 out of 40 found this review helpful

I think one good measure of a mystery is how early in the book you can make an educated guess about what the truth is. If the solution is apparent too soon, bad mystery, the farther into the book you have to travel, can indicate just how clever the writing has been. Wild guesses don't count.

This is the first book I have read by Ms. Val Mcdermid, I will be backtracking to her earlier work, and whatever comes next is an automatic purchase. This lady writes an amazing story. Even though the book runs to 404 pages, you will be in a select group if the riddles are solved much before the last several dozen pages. And if it is the last dozen, don't worry, this Authoress is that good at not showing her hand, her complete hand until the very end.

The book is set in a contemporary time frame, but the isolated nature of where the story unfolds makes the reader feel as though it's the 19th and not the 20th Century. Ms. Mcdermid also plays with what may or may not actually be true. From the very beginning, even prior to the start of the story, the reader is getting set up, or perhaps misdirected, for the Author's voice and the voice of the Author in the tale share a line that is indistinct at best. I thought it very clever, and it added an interesting element that stayed at the back of my mind throughout the work.

I finished the book on a very stormy night, which could have been taken directly from the book. The storm had driven my 8-year-old son into the room. When I finished, Ms. Mcdermid had succeeded in scaring the blazes from me. I suggested my son might want to keep the light on for a bit. To my disappointment he said no.


Much more than a police procedural   August 17, 2000
 27 out of 27 found this review helpful

In modern British fiction writing much of the interesting work (engaging with social issues, politics, and class) is found with genre writers. As some novelists retreat into an insular examination of the lives and loves of writers (and other creative types), genre writers - in dealing with the underside of humanity - can examine the big questions. At the vanguard of modern British crime writing are the likes of Ruth Rendell, Denise Mina, John Harvey, Michael Dibdin, and the writer of the book under review, Val McDermid.

McDermid is an interesting writer. Her previous books have included a PI series, and pyschological thrillers that geuninely shock (such as The Mermaids Singing). This book, A Place of Execution, is something of a departure.

It falls readily into two principal parts. The first section comprises a police procedural. It is set at the time of the notorious Moors Murders in 1963 (what is it with British writers and 1963? John Lawton's A Little White Death and Reginald Hill's Recalled to Life, also use the year as a starting point). The Moors Murders were child killings that horrified British society and still have an effect today. As the novel opens a child goes missing in a small isolated village. The child is the step daughter of the local squire. A new police inspector is involved, and this first section follows his investigation. It is written in the third person, but the chief protagonist is the inspector and we follow his attempts to win the trust of the small community, and the police politics that is played out in the background. One does not wish to give too much away about the investigation, as there are a number of twists throughout this section. But the section concludes with a trial at which the inspector's own character and motivation is questioned.

McDermid excels at the portrayal of the effect of the loss of a child on a family and on a community. Also convincing are the relationships McDermid draws. The developing friendship between the investigating police sergeant, and the recently graduated inspector; the close relationship between the inspector and his wife (a peripheral character in the novel, but a convincing anchor of stability in his personal life); and the manner in which he wins the trust of local people. There are some grotesque local characters created; but coming from a small locality myself these characters are not out of place, and are only symptomatic of a general approach to non-locals. The class distinction between the squire and the villagers is also acutely observed.

If the novel were to stop at the conclusion of the trial there would be a highly satisfying genre procedural.

However, it is with an audacious second half that McDermid excels. It transpires that the first half is a memoir written by a journalist. The inspector then tries to block publication.

In this section we follow the professional writer researching, gathering information, and examining an incident from over thirty years before. Many of the characters in the first half are revisited, older, and with prejudices reinforced, or challenged by their own experiences.

Character development is wonderful , and the investigation becomes a gripping thriller.

In this section McDermid turns all that you have accepted in the first half on its head.

This is an excellent novel. Its characterisation is, without exception, of the highest quality; and it is strongly plotted. Its sole flaw, to my mind, is the conclusion. It is bold, but not wholly convincing. However, for me, its merits outweigh this. This is compelling, and looks at the extremes of love and loss. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

If you enjoy this book I would suggest you try On Beulah Height by Reginald Hill, which has similar virtues, and is as well written.


A multi-layered thriller which asks difficult questions.   March 16, 2002
 20 out of 20 found this review helpful

"A Place of Execution" is a chilling tale set in rural Derbyshire, and woven around the disappearance of Alison Carter, a teenage girl. The year is 1963, and the place is the (fictional) backwater village of Scardale; secluded from modern life, populated by only a few families who have been inbreeding for generations; and ruled, like in medieval days, by a squire who owns everybody and everything in the village. And it is none other than the stepdaughter of much-hated new squire Phillip Hawkin, a newcomer to Scardale's tight-knit society, who has disappeared.

Following the investigation led by newly minted D.I. and Jimmy-Stewart-look-alike George Bennett and his more experienced partner, Sergeant Tommy Clough, we as readers slowly become familiar with Scardale and its inhabitants, who are reluctant to open up to outsiders - even if they don't hate them as much as Hawkin - and in that reluctance, provide less than the much-needed help in discovering Alison. In fact, when ultimately a suspect is arrested, on the strength of evidence tying him to both Alison's disappearance and another horrific crime, Alison is still missing. And she remains missing throughout the suspect's trial. It will take all of 35 years and a new investigation by journalist Catherine Heathcoate, who befriends Bennett after having met his son Paul, and who is able to procure Paul's help in convincing Bennett to revisit those long-past events which never ceased to trouble him, to reveal a truth which by then seemed all but buried for good ... and like the story's protagonists, many a reader may be left wondering whether this is not the way it should have stayed.

"A Place of Execution" is a well-plotted thriller which ambitiously tackles issues from depravity, vice and vengeance to sin, deceit, guilt and justice; and all of these, on multiple levels. It purposely leaves the questions it asks unanswered, forcing its readers to come to their own terms with each of these issues. And by changing its narrative perspective from George Bennett in 1963 to Catherine Heathcoate in 1998, it offers the reader two different angles from which to see the events and the questions they pose.

Unfortunately, for me, the change of the narrator's viewpoint brought with it a certain loss of depth and perspective. Whereas the social setting of Scardale village and the characters introduced in the book's first part are compellingly drawn down to their last unique feature and down to the last one of the supporting characters, those introduced in the second part are in many respects only superficially sketched pastiches that failed to engage me. And whereas in the book's first part nothing is left to coincidence and random, the second part is riddled with coincidences; each of which individually might have been within the realm of possibilities, but which taken as a whole were just a tad too much for me to accept. I couldn't shake the impression that for the sake of the coveted change of narrating perspective in the book's second part, Ms. McDermid was willing to sacrifice more than a negligible part of the integrity and the feeling of authenticity she had so effectively created before; and for the sake of driving the plot to its conclusion she sacrificed the character development which had worked so well in holding the story together in the beginning.

Fortunately, the book's second part is decidedly shorter than the first one; and while it dragged a little for the reasons mentioned above, I still found myself interested enough to read on to learn how it would end and whether my suspicions as to the solution of the mystery itself were correct - only to find that while I had correctly guessed the core facts as such, the book's end does not offer a simple solution at all. Rather, in real life, it would almost certainly have been only the beginning of a very long and difficult healing process on which the protagonists would have had to embark.

To her credit, Ms. McDermid shuns the gore and sensationalism to which her book's central theme would easily lend itself. And even if you are reading "A Place of Execution" primarily for the mystery story it contains, there is plenty to puzzle over in terms of clues, pseudo-clues, red herrings, red flags and more. Bear with George, Tommy and Catherine until the end. You won't regret it - not half as much as *they* find themselves wishing they had never touched the case of Alison Carter's disappearance.

Also recommended:
The Grave Tattoo
Dead Beat: A Kate Brannigan Mystery
Report for Murder: A Lindsay Gordon Mystery (Lindsay Gordon Mystery Series)
The Mermaids Singing (Dr. Tony Hill and Carol Jordan Mysteries)
Wire in the Blood 4 Pack


Good enough for Ruth Rendell   October 3, 2000
 18 out of 18 found this review helpful

I bought this after I read an newspaper article where Ruth Rendell said this was the best detective novel she'd read in years. I thought she probably knew what she was talking about, and I wasn't disappointed. A Place of Execution is a haunting experience that sticks in the mind long after the book itself is closed. It deals with important themes such as loss and redemption, the nature of justice versus the law, and does so against a backdrop of dramatic landscape and a close-knit community that doesn't seem to be equipped to deal with outsiders. The writing is taut and suspenseful, and the twist at the end left me open-mouthed in admiration. This is a must-read.