Report for Murder - Hardcover

McDermid, Val

3.34

2,269 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312038887 ISBN 13: 9780312038885

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1990

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

When the star performer at a fund raising event is murdered, Lindsay Gordon, a lesbian journalist, must find the killer in order to clear her best friend's name

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Val McDermid grew up in Kirkcaldy on the east coast of Scotland, 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. Now a full-time writer, she divides her time between Manchester and Northumberland.

From Kirkus Reviews:

The first US publication of a novel that appeared in 1987 in England. Here, gay journalist Lindsay Gordon (Deadline for Murder, 1997, etc.), based in Glasgow and presently freelancing to eke out a living, makes her debut when longtime friend Paddy Callaghan, a drama teacher at the Derbyshire House Girls' School, gets her a magazine assignment for a story on the school's fund-raising weekendan event that's part of the schools battle to fend off builder James Cartwright, who wants to buy its athletic fields for residential development. Other weekend guests include novelist/talk-show star Cordelia Brown and famed cellist Lorna Smith-Coupey. As the audience awaits a benefit concert that evening, Lorna is discovered dead-garrotted by a cello stringin one of the backstage music rooms. In short order, a truculent Inspector Dart has jailed Paddy for the killing, and school head Pamela Overton has authorized Lindsay and Cordelia (lovers at first sight) to try to find evidence to clear Paddy. A string of tedious interviews, plus repetitive reviews of time frames and alibis, produces a host of Lorna-hating suspects, but it's a second death that pushes our journalist-sleuth to a violent confrontation with the not-so-surprising killer. Clumsy plotting, relentlessly verbose characters, and a sluggish pace don't help Lindsay's overextended debut outingone of the author's lesser efforts. -- Copyright �1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.