Advances in science and technology have meant that more cold cases than ever are getting solved. The latest, most sensational example was the arrest of architect Rex Heuermann in Long Island’s Gilgo Beach serial-murder case last summer. The three women were killed in 2009–10, but the initial investigation was botched by corruption and incompetence. A new task force identified Heuermann as a suspect last year by using DNA harvested from a pizza box and location data from cell phones to assemble a solid case against him. The arrest induced something of a public catharsis: however briefly, order was restored in a chaotic world, and justice apparently done gave the victims’ families some relief.
That need for wrongs to be righted, along with a fascination with forensics, explains the popularity of crime fiction focused on cold cases. One of the best of these series, written by Val McDermid, features the Historic Cases Unit (the Brits prefer this terminology to the slangy “cold case”) in Edinburgh, led by Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie. In the series’s seventh installment, the team find themselves at loose ends at the beginning of the pandemic. (Setting Past Lying during the coronavirus was a gutsy move, since the conventional wisdom is that pandemic books don’t sell. Luckily, the Scottish Queen of Crime ignored this.)
