Dead Beat - Hardcover

Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community and attended Oxford University. She worked as a journalist in Scotland for 14 years, becoming National Bureau Chief of a major national Sunday tabloid. She quit journalism in 1991 and has since become a full-time writer. She is creator of both the Lindsay Gordon and the Kate Brannigan mystery series. Her novel, A Place of Execution (St. Martin's, 2000) was recently named by the New York Times Book Review as one of the notable books of 2000 and won the L.A. Times Book Prize in the new murder/mystery category. It was also shortlisted in 2001 for the Edgar Award and has been nominated for the 2001 Boucheron Anthony Award. Her latest Lindsay Gordon novel, Booked for Murder, was nominated for the Best Lesbian Mystery by the Lambda Literary Fdn., 2000, and has been chosen by Bookspan's Insight/Out book-of-the-month club.

Set in Manchester, England, which its natives claim as the home of rock 'n' roll, the forthright and unpretentious sleuth introduced in this fast-paced story is sure to win readers' hearts. Kate Brannigan is hired by rock legend Jett to locate his former partner and lover, Moira. Kate finds Moira, a rehabilitated drug user, living with--and in love with--Maggie, an ex-counselor. Moira reluctantly agrees to return to Jett to help his career while Kate goes back to her investigation of counterfeiters and her own lover, a rock journalist. But six weeks later Moira is murdered--beaned by a tenor sax--and Jett wants Kate to find which member of his inner circle is the culprit. As Kate questions Jett's entourage, she uncovers why everyone closest to him wanted Moira dead. McDermid's ( Open and Shut ) snappy, often comic prose keeps the story humming as Kate is drawn deeper and deeper into the twisted plot of her first murder investigation.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.