Common Murder: The Second Lindsay Gordon Mystery - Softcover

McDermid, Val

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1883523087 ISBN 13: 9781883523084

Publisher: Spinsters Ink, 1995

Synopsis

Ace reporter and lesbian socialist Lindsay Gordon is once again in the thick of events when an alleged assault at a women's peace encampment north of London turns deadly. After a former lover of Gordon's is first accused of attacking, and then murdering, prominent citizen and vocal anti-Brownlow Common activist Rupert Crabtree, Gordon finds herself embroiled in an investigation with far-reaching implications. These extend far beyond the women's peace movement, all the way up to the highest levels of Her Majesty's government.
In the course of solving a crime that some authorities are determined to pin on a community of women activists, Gordon is forced to confront all the contradictions in her life: her personal loyalties as a friend and a lover, her political convictions as a working-class lesbian, her professional responsibilities as a journalist, and her civil obligations as an English subject.
As she works her way through the tangle of personal conflicts and state secrets that led to Crabtree's murder, Lindsay Gordon discovers, sometimes to her own surprise, what concessions she can make in her life and what things are beyond compromise.

About this title

About the Author:

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.

From Booklist:

Lesbian reporter Lindsay Gordon goes to cover the long protest of a cruise missile base by a British women's peace encampment and finds there an attractive ex-lover who is accused of murder, not to mention routine assaults and an official cover-up. Although the book's plot is sometimes contrived and the pacing is uneven, Gordon is a gutsy heroine committed to action, righting wrongs, and solving mysteries who sometimes takes large helpings of abuse and plays both sides of the allegiance fence in order to succeed. As she battles to solve the problems of a monogamous relationship against a background of institutionalized secrecy, lies, and brutality, the author gives readers a strong sense of contemporary England, too. Whitney Scott

About this edition

• Publisher: Spinsters Ink
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 1883523087
• ISBN 13: 9781883523084
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 250