An engaging mystery with the exuberant Kate Brannigan, private detective, trying to find out how a Monet could have been stolen from right under the security system she developed. A second case keeps her busy trying to track down an industrial poisoner. Although peppered with wisecracks, the writing is unremarkable. ( )

This book was written in 2003, that’s just 2 years after Steve Jobs introduced the iPod and 4 years before he unveiled the first iPhone. There’s quite a lot of tech involved in the telling of this story and it’s cutting edge for 2003, in fact it’s far fetched for 2003, so it makes for lame reading in 2020 in the midst of a pandemic.

Having said that I cannot give a lower rating because of that, it’s just if you were thinking of reading it I’d say don’t because it will irk you.

As for the story and characters, they are also 2003 so I am going to try and channel myself from 17 years ago.

The story is not fast paced but wide ranging in its scope. I like how it was slick in some places but naive in others. I would not have read this book 17 years ago because at the time I was driving 110kms per day to work and back so I would have been listening to this on my car stereo (after ripping the CDs from the library and putting the mp3s on an SD Card. Ha!

I would have loved it, not because it is gripping or tense or particularly well written, but because it demands nothing of you, it is entertainment for anyone who likes crime/detective novels. Just that. ( )

I read this one after another of Kate Brannigan's adventures, and unlike the other, this book did not grab me from the start. It is actually a bit slow at the beginning, but from the trip abroad things start happening faster and it gets more exciting.
A good finale, too, and full of the dry humour that made me smile more than once while reading.
Still, I prefer Val McDermid when she writes about nasty serial killers and other crime novels! ( )

2.5*

Fun read but not as sophisticated as some of her other books. ( )

The fourth instalment in Val McDermid’s series featuring Kate Brannigan maintains the high standards of its predecessors. Kate, the engagingly self-reliant private investigator based in Manchester, is summoned to the stately home of a client for whom her firm had installed a state of the art security system. Embarrassingly, the home has been burgled and the prize possession, a Monet, has been stolen. Kate’s investigations reveal that there have been several similar burglaries around the country, and in each one just a single item, invariably the most valuable, has been taken. CCTV footage from one of the raids shows the burglars breaking in, heading straight for the one item, removing it and then escaping, all within a minute of breaching the property.

Meanwhile, Kate finds herself taken on by a new client. The perpetually bed tempered Graham Kerr believes that his company, which produces domestic cleaning fluids, is being blackmailed through targeted product tampering, which has already apparently left one customer dead from cyanide poisoning. Surly to bed, and surly to rise, Kerr seems to blame Kate for everything that has happened, overlooking the fact that she was only retained after the customer’s death.

Over the series McDermid has amassed an impressive supporting cast for Kate. In addition to her lover, music journalist Richard Barclay, there are an assortment of local senior police officer (some helpful, others less so), a daunting defence solicitor, and her best friend Alex, an investigative journalist (probably based upon McDermid’s own past working on the Northern crime desk at The Guardian). All of them become involved to a greater or lesser degree as Kate’s investigations lead her halfway across Europe.

McDermid’s great skill is to make her plots, and her characters’ actions and reactions, entirely plausible. Kate is not a superhero, and is as fallible at times as everyone else, occasionally coming to rue her own impetuosity. The two wholly separate plots are seamlessly interlaced throughout the book, and the story zips along with great pace. ( )