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The Distant Echo
Wednesday's Child
Three to Get Deadly
Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death
Have Mercy on Us All
The Mark of a Murderer
Csi: Miami: Smoking Gun
Compulsion
The Falls (Inspector Rebus S.)
The Black Dahlia
A Clockwork Orange (Essential.penguin S.)
Common Murder
Busman's Honeymoon (BBC Audio Collection: Crime) [AUDIOBOOK]
The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson
Something Rotten
Heat Wave (CSI Miami S.)
The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (Wordsworth Classics)
A Cruel Courtship
Death of an Englishman
Backlash
Soft Target
Death in the Clouds (BBC Radio Collection) [AUDIOBOOK]
Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came
Three Uses of the Knife
Final Edition

Average customer rating:

Aftermath of murder
A very good read from a very good contemporary mystery writer.
Moved awfully slow for a mystery
Slow start for me
Entertaining, But Just Okay

The Distant Echo
Val McDermid
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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Similar Items:

A Place of Execution
The Last Temptation (A Dr. Tony Hill & Carol Jordan Mystery)
Mermaids Singing
The Wire in the Blood (A Dr. Tony Hill & Carol Jordan Mystery)
Killing the Shadows (St. Martin's Minotaur Mysteries)

ASIN: 0312994834
Release Date: 2004-08-05

Book Description

It was a winter morning in 1978, that the body of a young barmaid was discovered in the snow banks of a Scottish cemetery. The only suspects in her brutal murder were the four young men who found her: Alex Gilbey and his three best friends. With no evidence but her blood
on their hands, no one was ever charged.

Twenty five years later, the Cold Case file on Rosie Duff has been reopened. For Alex and his friends, the investigation has also opened old wounds, haunting memories-and new fears. For a stranger has emerged from the shadows with his own ideas about justice. And revenge.

When two of Alex's friends die under suspicious circumstances, Alex knows that he and his innocent family are the next targets. And there's only way to save them: return to the cold-blooded past and uncover the startling truth about the murder. For there lies the identity of an avenging killer...

Customer Reviews:

Aftermath of murder.......2007-04-05

I listened to this book on tape. I highly recommend the unabridged recording. The narrator has the perfect Scottish accent, easy to follow and greatly adding to the novel's atmosphere. I was totally engrossed by the end of side one of the first tape. Four Scottish college students, on their way home from a party, find a dying girl. They are the only suspects and remain targets of police investigation and revengeful relatives for years. Twenty-five years after the murder it becomes apparent that someone is after the original suspects with deadly intent. The novel kept me guessing well into the second half. Even when I figured it out, there was still plenty of suspense to keep me listening with rapt attention until the very satisfying conclusion.

A very good read from a very good contemporary mystery writer........2007-01-14

This is a top-notch book by a very good contemporary mystery writer. She creates dybamic, multi-faceted characters and is a great plotter. This is one about 4 friends who are, when students, the suspects in a sex-related murder. But the case is not resolved and the years pass. There is someone taking revenge on the murder, the police reinvestigating the case and ... . Not to be missed; a writer who mixes successfully the old and the new in the mystery genre.

Moved awfully slow for a mystery.......2007-01-10

Several friends had recommended Val McDermid to me and so I finally got around to picking up one of her books at the local library.

In "The Distant Echo" McDermid gives us the story of a foursome of coming-of-age college mates in Scotland, walking home thoroughly drunk after a party. They literally stumble across the body of Rosie Duff, a young barmaid from the village who has been brutalized and left to bleed to death. But by the time the police arrive, she has died and the boys immediately move from being good samaritans to being suspects. Ultimately, there isn't anything other than circumstantial evidence linking the boys to the crime and they go free, but not before their reputations have been so tarnished that they are nearly run out of town. They spend the next 25 years trying to forget the events of that fateful night, mostly without success, when suddenly two of the four are murdered within days of one another. The remaining two quickly become convinced that the murders are not coincidence, but the work of Rosie's original killer, coming back to cover his tracks.

While McDermid serves up a whodunnit in this book, I have to admit that I figured out who the killer was in the first third of the book and the remainder just seemed to plod along until the final few chapters where she finally revealed the killer's identity...about 20 chapters too late for me. The only thing that really took me by surprise was a small plot twist that, while obvious in retrospect, had allowed the real killer to escape detection for so long.

Even if I had not figured out the killer so early on, this book still would have moved interminably slowly for me. McDermid is a fine writer - make no mistake. I just found the pace to be maddeningly slow. One of the characters in the novel - a journalist - complained at one point of there being nothing worse than getting the information you came for early in an interview, and then having to sit through another two hours of tedium when the fact you want is already in-hand. That largely sums up how I felt about this book and McDermid would have been wise to take the lament of her character to heart. It could have been 200 pages shorter and accomplished the same thing without feeling rushed, truncated, or selling the characters short.

One thing I did enjoy about this book was the setting. It takes place in Scotland and the dialect, figures of speech, landmarks, and banalities of life from a different culture were interesting. It wasn't long before I could hear the characters' Scottish accents and felt immersed in their lives. Unfortunately, this enjoyable aspect of the book was more than offset by McDermid's portrayal of Christians. One of the main characters becomes a Christian and the author seizes on the conversion experience to turn one of the more interesting individuals in the book into little more than a cardboard cutout. I can often tell whether a writer is a Christian or not simply by the way they portray Christians. Those with little understand of what it is to be a Christian either serve up a self-righteous stereotype or someone who somehow ceases to become human after their conversion. In this novel, McDermid gives us both and just continues to hammer it home every time the character makes an appearance. It was quite embarrassing really, and did not reflect well on McDermid. Christians are real people, capable of more than just pious platitudes, a fact of which McDermid seems to be unaware. Perhaps her entire exposure to Christians is via American TV evangelists that make it onto the British airwaves...I'm not sure, but her bias was simply too blatant to ignore.

All in all, McDermid strikes me as having the potential to deliver 5-star books, but she failed to do so here. I'll probably read one or two more, but if they move as slowly as this one and if she serves up more stereotypes like she did in this one, I'll move on to others in this genre rather than sticking with her.

Slow start for me.......2006-09-21

I didn't find the characters appealing at the start so I had trouble getting interested. So much time spent on unappealing people.

Entertaining, But Just Okay.......2006-09-05

This novel was entertaining, but not great. Some parts dragged . When the charcters were youger, they were more interesting than when they got older. The story is a little slow at times. I would have never have guessed who committed the crimes. It is a B book.

Average customer rating:

The Distant Echo

Manufacturer: Recorded Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette
ASIN: 1402561423

Product Description

Val McDermid, the best-selling author of A Place of Execution, returns with her most stunning novel yetan intricate, thought-provoking story of revenge and murder. Its 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.

Average customer rating:

A Distant Echo (Timeswept)
Bobby Hutchinson
Manufacturer: Love Spell
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0505520907

Echo of a Distant Drum:Winslow Homer and the Civil War

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Echo of a Distant Drum:Winslow Homer and the Civil War
Julian Grossman
Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Distant Echo
Val Mcdermid
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000O8PY5O

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A Distant Echo
Mary Baxter
Manufacturer: Xlibris Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1413480667

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The Distant Echo

Manufacturer: HarperCollinsPublishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 140256869X

Echo of a Distant Drum: An Irreverent & Unique View of the British in India

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Echo of a Distant Drum: An Irreverent & Unique View of the British in India
Maurice Willoughby
Manufacturer: Book Guild Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Distant Echo
Val McDermid
Manufacturer: Recorded Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette
ASIN: 1402561415

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Axander A Distant Echo (Viking Games)

Manufacturer: Viking Games
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0970878109

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