FOOD & RETAIL
Book Review
Val McDermid, Scottish crime writer extraordinaire, has a new heroine. Allie Burns is, as McDermid herself once was, an aspiring young journalist. For Allie, getting the story is everything. Are the methods and the human casualties of her passion for getting the front page splash a little iffy? Interesting point. Ms McDermid sets her novel 1979 in that year. 1979, as we know, became historically tagged as the year of discontent for the strikes and civil unrest which nearly tore “broken Britain” apart. In Scotland thousands of lorry drivers were on strike and it was the run up to devolution. The rich were getting richer and it was a time when businessmen doing dodgy tax deals were actually frowned on, rather than greeted with a shrug. But this is only the backdrop, Allie works in the newsroom of a Scottish national newspaper, full of sexism, homophobia and three hour boozy lunches, where the news is crammed with clichés and bad puns, miracle babies and sob stories. It’s a great snapshot of an era, but the storylines are pure crime, with a bit of ethics for good measure. It’s Val McDermid’s 35th book and the first of five moving through the decades with Allie Burns as the protagonist. Watch this space.
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