1989 Val McDermid

1989 By Val McDermid Paperback published by Sphere 2nd February 2023

ISBN 9780751583137

1989. The world is on the brink of revolution and journalist Allie Burns is a woman on a mission. When she discovers a lead about the exploitation of society’s most vulnerable, Allie is determined to investigate and give a voice to the silenced.

Else where, a ticking clock begins the countdown to a murder. As Allie begins to connect the dots and inches closer to exposing the truth, it is more shocking than she ever imagined. There’s nothing like a serial killer story and to tell I, Allie must risk her freedom and her life.

MY REVIEW

This is a brand new unmissable, heart stopping thriller from the number one bestseller, Val McDermid. I have read quite a few books by Val McDermid, which I can tell you the storylines stay well inside me after I have finished each one, with giving me actual nightmares after reading them.

Extract from Chapter 6

The man standing before her was clearly a doctor. The white coat and the stethoscope were the giveaway. Allie gave him her best smile. ‘ Hi. I’m guessing you’re Dr Rob?’

‘It’s Doctor Butler. Your a journalist, is that right?’ There was no welcome in his voice or his expression.

Allie began to explain her reasons for being there, but she’d barely managed the first sentence before Alix had joined them. ‘She’s one of the good guys, Doc, she butted in.

He didn’t look convinced. ‘No such thing, when it comes to hacks.’ Butler looked weary, dark smudges under his eyes and downward turn to his mouth that had the air of permanence. He didn’t look old enough to seem so defeated. ‘Your tribe are not welcome here,’ he added. ‘ I appreciate why you feel so hostile’

‘Hostile? You think this is hostile?’ he scoffed. You people are the experts in hostile. You’re the ones who dubbed my unit “the Plague House”. You’re the ones who knocked on doors along this street asking people how they felt about having drug addicts and male prostitutes spreading the AIDS virus in their community.’

‘I don’t condone that,’ Allie insisted. ‘But we’re not all the same. I don’t condemn the whole medical profession because some doctors and nurses refuse to treat people who are HIV positive. Look, I’m a lesbian, I know all about homophobia. And I’ve already lost one of my dearest friends to AIDS.

‘She telling the truth,’ Alix weighed in. Give her a chance, Doc’

‘I’m not even here to write about your clinic specifically,’ Allie added.

‘Then what are you doing in my clinic if you’re not here to find a cheap headline? His belligerence was fading now. Allie that had more to do with weariness than taking her at face value.

‘I won’t deny that I’m pursuing a story. That’d be pointless.

About author Val McDermid

Val McDermid is a number one bestseller whose novels have been translated into more than forty languages, and have sold over eighteen million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009, was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2010 and received the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award in 2011. In 2016, Val received the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival and in 2017 received the DIVA Literary Prize for Crime, and was elected a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Val has served as a judge for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize, and was Chair of the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017. She is the recipient of six honorary doctorates and is an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She writes full-time and divides her time between Edinburgh and East Neuk of Fife.

https://www.valmcdermid.com/

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