![]() Val McDermid is probably best known for her gritty, gory novels featuring Detective Inspector Carol Jordan and psychiatrist Dr Tony Hill, televised as 'Wire in the Blood' (taking the name of the second novel in the series). ![]() And it's not obvious until quite late in the book who the murderer is going to be. The story is a bit silly, but it just-about works (taking into account a fair amount of self-parody), and tough-talking Brannigan and her cynical throwaway comments about the world she moves in are fun. And not just any old murder, but a murder in a mansion containing a finite number of suspects. And, without too much obvious grinding of the cogs of narrative inevitability, she finds herself face to face with her first corpse and investigating a murder. In this opener, she is persuaded against her better judgment to take time off from a counterfeit wristwatch investigation to undertake a missing-person enquiry for a rock-star client (yes, they still had those in Manchester in 1992 too.). She does the legwork whilst her business partner Bill Mortensen does the clever stuff with floppy disks and modems (yes, 1992 was a long time ago!). ![]() Dead Beat introduces Kate Brannigan, a partner in a Manchester security consultancy that does investigation work mostly in commercial and computer fraud cases. ![]()
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