Page Updated: 04/09/2007

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Val McDermid - Page 4

Clean Break A Suitable Job For A Woman Crackdown Kick Back Union Jack

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Paperback - Harpercollins

Clean Break
Manchester-based private eye Kate Brannigan is not amused when thieves have the audacity to steal a Monet from a stately home where she’d arranged the security. She’s even less thrilled when the hunt for the thieves drags her on a treacherous foray across Europe as she goes head to head with organised crime. And as if that isn’t enough, a routine industrial case starts leaving a trail of bodies across the Northwest, giving Kate more problems than she can deal with.
Cleaning up the mess in Clean Break forces Kate to confront harsh truths in her own life as she battles with a testing array of villains in a case that stretches love and loyalty to the limits.
"Solid pleasure.... this moves along with the speed of a Porsche, so smooth you can almost kid yourself you haven’t been sitting on the edge of your seat throughout" Frances Hegarty, Mail On Sunday
"Top marks for pace and plot" Mike Ripley, Daily Telegraph
"Zippy action, a well-crafted plot and some refreshingly gritty northern truths" Marcel Berlins, The Times.
"One of my favourite authors" Sara Paretsky.

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British Pbk Original - Harpercollins

A Suitable Job For A Woman
The female private eye is one of the sexiest and most exciting of fictional creations. But who are the real women who pound the mean streets? How do they get into this seemingly unladylike profession and what makes them stay, despite the risks they encounter? What qualities does it take to survive in this harshest of male worlds?
From the elegant manager of a successful all-women investigation agency in Merseyside to the Californian woman who spends her days working for murderers, crime writer Val McDermid has spoken to female private eyes on both sides of the Atlantic, heard their most terrifying stories and learned how they work - whether it's going undercover to bust drug barons or serving injunctions on violent offenders.
What she discovered is a group of women who are every bit as tough and fascinating as their fictional counterparts, with lives that few could even imagine.
A Suitable Job for a Woman is a riveting insight into the women who fight crime on their own terms and beat men at their own game.

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Paperback - Harpercollins

Crackdown
There was only one reason Manchester-based private eye Kate Brannigan was prepared to let her boyfriend help out with an investigation into a car sales fraud - nothing bad could happen. But by now Kate should know that with Richard you have to expect the unexpected. With the unexpected being Richard behind bars, Kate seems to be the obvious choice to look after his eight-year-old son - who proves even more troublesome than his father. Kate finds herself dragged into a world of drug traffickers, child pornographers, fraudsters and violent gangland enforcers… bringing her face to face with death in the most terrifying investigation of her career.
Shortlisted for the Gold Dagger Award and the Anthony Award
"Tough, funny and intensely topical. McDermid stands out as one of the few contemporary writers actually nourished by the here and now" Literary Review
"Good atmosphere and a fast fluently told story: Kate is as tough as Warshawski, but less hung up on political correctness" Daily Mail

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Paperback - Vista (1996)

Kick Back
Kate Brannigan, feisty Manchester-based PI, is back, investigating the bizarre case of the missing conservatories. Before long she’s up to her neck in crooked land deals, mortgage scams, financial chicanery - and murder. But when a favour for a friend puts Kate’s own life in danger, bizarre is not the first word she thinks of...
'Kate Brannigan is wonderful. I haven't had so much fun in ages' Frances Fyfield
‘Kate Brannigan deserves promotion to the top rank, alongside Kinsey Millhone and V.I. Warshawski. Plot, characterisation, pace are all first-rat, and the bouncy Brannigan is one of the most likeable of all today’s PI’s’ Sunday Telegraph
‘Wry, spry, resourceful, resilient and fitted out with a quip for every contretemps’ TLS
‘Kate Brannigan is truly welcome. A fictional equivalent of Victoria Wood, hot on one-liners, Chinese food, tabloid papers and Thai boxing, she is refreshingly funny' Daily Mail
‘A satisfying range of villains, Manchester and its environs turn deeply sinister and Brannigan toughs and wisecracks her way to a solution. Passes the Second Novel test triumphantly’ The Times

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Paperback - Women's Press (2001)

Paperback Women's Press

Paperback Women's Press

Union Jack
Journalist Lindsay Gordon is more accustomed to investigating murder than being suspected of it. But when union boss Tom Jack falls to his death from her bedroom window after a spectacularly public row with Lindsay, it seems the only way to prove her innocence is to find the real culprit. In an investigation that draws her inexorably into her own past, Lindsay is forced to confront hard moral choices before she can clear her name.
'Homeward bound from California to research a thesis on women's roles in the trades union movement, ex-journalist Lindsay Gordon finds herself number-one suspect when sexist union supremo, Tom 'Union' Jack, lording it at a media conference, plunges to his death from her tenth-floor window… full of bitchery and backbiting, excellently done' Literary Review
'Stimulating and enjoyable… gripping until the very last page' Pink Paper
'Neatly constructed and splendidly sarcastic' Daily Telegraph
'Funny and scary by turns, always sharp.' Daily Telegraph
'Tough, exciting, moody and unpredictable.' The Times
'Fun at all levels.' Evening Standard

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