The last of her enjoyable Kate Brannigan series, and for some reason I had only this one in my shelf, though I had read them all last century, at least in translation. Kate is/was my favourite of her female characters. I had only read one of McDermid's first series (Lindsay), and it seemed dry, dreary, slogging - I approved of the sentiments and the politics, but it was unpleasant - as if serial torture isn't, you ask? Well, differently, I reply - and didn't go anywhere, made me feel nothing apart from frustration, didn't give me new thoughts. I always felt guilty because her first series was the only lesbian lead character, but maybe being too close to home put too many pressures on a writer already having a lot of things to say? I felt guilty for enjoying Kate's relationship with Richard! And yet it was half the reason I kept reading and liking this series. Set in Manchester and shorter than her psycho thrillers, it is full of realism and social criticism, but with more humour and verve or zing. There is a variety of characters, all interesting, many recurring (and the lesbian angle is IMO powerfully portrayed in another volume, where the officially muted fact that two women can have each others babies is explored). Kate is self-critical and relies on a variety of contacts. Her Richard lives in the connected semi-detached house to hers, smokes (but only joints) and is a long-haired, bespectacled music journalist. But the very understatement of the few scenes they share speaks to me more convincing of love than any declaractions (IIRC, in an earlier volume she thinks of ending it). It's a rationally thought out and plausible ideal living relationship, and they are both different and alike enough to get along - if as usual she is the stronger character and has to save him from killers, that's no big deal. I just always wished to see more of them together; the sparsely worded glimpses would be a pattern for me reading her, always looking for more of this running through her hard-boiled crime novels in faint trace lines. Don't tell me to go look at romance where it belongs now!
