Blue Genes
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4.2 • 23 Ratings
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
A riveting Kate Brannigan thriller, from No.1 Sunday Times bestseller Val McDermid.
‘Val McDermid remains unrivalled’ Observer
Kate Brannigan’s having a bad week. Her boyfriend’s death notice is in the paper and her plan to catch a team of fraudsters is in disarray.
Kate can’t even cry on her best friend’s shoulder, for Alexis has worries of her own. Her girlfriend’s pregnant, and when the doctor responsible for the fertility treatment is murdered, Alexis needs Kate like she’s never done before.
Delving into the alien world of medical experimentation, Kate confronts betrayal and cold-blooded greed as she fights to save not only her livelihood, but her life as well…
Reviews
‘One of my favourite authors’ Sara Paretsky
‘Kate Brannigan is truly welcome… she is refreshingly funny’ Daily Mail
‘This is crime writing of the very highest order’ Marcel Berlins, The Times
‘McDermid packs it all into 237 highly readable pages’ Natasha Cooper, TLS
‘A powerful sense of place and the usual flak of misanthropic one-liners’ Literary Review
Praise for Val McDermid:
'No one rivals Val McDermid’s skill at writing truly terrifying thrillers’ Good Housekeeping
‘The real mistress of psychological gripping thrillers' Daily Express
'McDermid's capacity to enter the warped mind of a deviant criminal is shiveringly convincing' The Times
‘Val McDermid is undoubtedly the queen of British crime’ Observer
'McDermid’s expertly juggled plotlines and masterful handling of pace and tension tick all the best boxes’ Guardian
‘The queen of crime is still at the top of her game’ Independent
‘One of today’s most accomplished crime writers’ Literary Review
‘Her writing is never less than excellent’ Crime Time
About the author
Val McDermid is a No.1 bestseller whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have sold more than sixteen 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. In 2017, she received the DIVA Literary Prize for Crime and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She is also the patron of the Scottish Book Trust. Val writes full time and lives in Edinburgh and the East Neuk of Fife.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After The Mermaids Singing (see Forecasts, Oct. 28), her harrowing Gold Dagger winner, McDermid returns to her Manchester PI Kate Brannigan (last seen in Clean Break) for a fast-paced joyride that swoops and curves past (or right over) villains with barely a pause. Still mourning the death of her lover, Richard, Kate is hired by two ``barely comprehensible Glaswegian musicians'' to find out who is trashing their band's reputation by sending goons to break up their shows. She hasn't time to troll Manchester's music scene before friends complicate things by dropping bombshells. First, her business partner announces he's selling his share of the shop and moving to Australia; unfortunately, Kate lacks the funds to buy him out. Then her best friend, Alexis, says that she and her pregnant lover, Christine, need help. The gynecologist who, as Alexis puts it, ``worked with us'' on the pregnancy has been murdered, and Alexis believes that if Kate doesn't steal the relevant medical files they'll lose the baby. And that's if Kate can figure out who the doctor is: Alexis knows her as Helen Maitland, but the newspapers call her Sarah Blackstone. By the time Kate figures out who stabbed the mysterious doctor, she has forgotten why she's looking. But as Kate cruises along, whether setting up a trap with her chum DCI Della Prentice or cutting a deal with the ``Godfather of Manchester'' (who has a fake Italian accent), readers will happily keep up, even if it leaves them a little breathless. FYI: McDermid's Gold Dagger Award- winning mystery, The Mermaids Singing, is being published in the U.S. in December by HarperCollins.
