Review by Malcolm Martland 9 July 2009
This is a girly detective story – I bought it at Wem Co-op for £1.50 while I was away – and I’d just finished Robert Harris’s Enigma – I’ve been back 2 weeks now and I’ve only just finished struggling through. I should have known from the title – it is about a TV star that has had poison pen letters threatening her with death – and to make matters worse each chapter begins with an Astrological Chart titled something like Jupiter trines with Saturn – honestly some people will believe anything – especially if it’s utter garbage. But it is the writer of the charts Dorothea Dawson a fortune teller that is the first victim – her brains bashed out with her crystal ball – well that I did find mildly amusing. She should have seen it coming – haha! She was associated with the local TV station – particularly the show the Northerners – a thinly disguised parody on Coronation Street – she parked her mystic campervan in the car park so that the poor stressed luvvies could get a reading – what a load of cobblers……………!
Val McDermid adopts the strategies of other female crime writers by having a female investigator – in this case Private Investigator Kate Brannigan – check out Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta and Kathy Reich’s Temperance Brennan for example. This is not set in the US or Quebec however but in Manchester and the Saddleworth Moors in deepest winter. And of course her plucky female guiles beat the blustering chauvinist police investigators.
I do like some of Val McDermid’s crime novels, she was made famous by Wire in Blood and the TV series - but I should have first read the review of that fine guide to literature - Good Housekeeping! “Contemporary feminist crime at its finest” Not my scene thanks.
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