The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 7 November 2022
by Val McDermid
Val McDermid has been writing mystery and police procedural novels for many years, is quite well-known and highly regarded, and has had many of her works adapted for television. This novel, which came out during the pandemic, is the first in a new series for her, featuring protagonist Allie Burns, and which continues already with 1989. It is also the first novel by McDermid that this reader has read. As the title suggests, it is 1979, Glasgow, Scotland, and Allie Burns is a reporter for a local tabloid newspaper, the Clarion. The book opens on a busy scene aboard a snowbound train, a scene which turns into a human-interest story for the paper.
And that's where we are: the offices of a busy newspaper in 1979 Glasgow, a city of grit and ground-level energy, just before the dawn of Thatcher's Britain. Indeed, there is an independence movement afoot, as there always is in Scotland. A proposal to devolve legislative power from London to Edinburgh is about to be voted upon. Meanwhile, others would rather have outright independence from the UK, and some of those are ready to take up an insurrection along the lines of Northern Ireland's IRA. In 1979, these were very real threats. In 2022, things have calmed down again, and the political landscape is transformed. But independence still stirs interest in Scotland. Meanwhile, Allie, who is trying to make her way in a male-dominated smoke-filled scotch-soaked world, works with Danny, a more experienced reporter who has uncovered some financial shenanigans that may or may not involve his own brother. The success of this reporting spurs Allie to find something even bigger, and there we find ourselves back to the Scottish independence movement.
Throughout the book there are hints that the many news stories that are investigated have some fundamental connections. The drama lurks in the background of the immediate action of hunting down and reporting. Are our heroes great reporters, ultimately, or are they agents provoceteurs? And when a grim discovery is made, which of the pots that they've stirred has finally boiled over to violence? The book nevertheless has a quiet feeling. The stories are explored and written, and then quietly fall to the background as the next stories come along. There is a deliberate tone to the writing that some may find makes the book drag a bit, though it didn't bother this reader. McDermid brings in some of the details that evoke Glasgow in 1979, though it didn't quite immerse this reader in its time and place. We get the prevalence of bacon rolls, men smoking, the gritty pubs, and, especially, the outdated identity politics of the time and the place. McDermid's structure here is loose, and doesn't quite fit the tropes of its genre. There's an unfinished quality to the story, but at least one element upended this reader's expectations. That in itself is a good thing for a story to do.