Book details

Book description

'This is crime writing of the very highest order … Kate Brannigan has turned into the most interesting sleuthess around' The Times

Dead Beat introduces Kate Brannigan, a female private detective who does for Manchester what V. I. Warshawski has done for Chicago.

As a favour, Kate agrees to track down a missing songwriter, Moira Pollock, a search that takes her into some of the seediest parts of Leeds and Bradford. But little does she realize that finding Moira is a prelude to murder… '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'
Mail on Sunday

'Zippy action, a well-crafted plot and some refreshingly gritty northern truths'
The Times Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. She is now a full-time writer and lives in South Manchester.