Allie Burns returns

by Ben Soton

1989 by Val McDermid. Softback: Sphere 2023; 464pp, rrp £8.99. Hardback: Little, Brown 2022; 432 pp, rrp £20

1989 was by the standards of those of us belonging to the progressive part of humanity a pretty dreadful year. The main news stories seemed to have been counter-revolution, leading to the destruction of socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and AIDS. These two events are reflected in 1989, the most recent novel by Scottish crime writer Val McDermid.
    The story features the adventures of the investigative journalist Allie Burns; the lead character in 1979 McDermid’s previous novel.
    Ten years on Burns finds herself working for Ace Media and living with her girlfriend Rhona, also a journalist. Both women work for Ace Media, owned by the multi-millionaire Wallace Lockhart. Lockhart, who has striking similarities with Robert Maxwell is not painted in a good light. He is portrayed as power grabby and venal whilst the story covers the theft from his company’s pension fund. Meanwhile his slightly wayward daughter Genevieve; again, a parody of Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine, is portrayed as reckless and devious as well as willing to cheat her own father out of money.
    Essentially two stories – the first being about HIV infected Scots migrating to Northern England in the hope of better treatment for what was then a fatal illness. The second, and longest part of the book takes Burns to the German Democratic Republic on the brink of the notorious counter-revolution. The novel exposes the author’s lack of awareness about left-wing politics and the former socialist countries. At some point in her novel, she describes life in East Germany as so bad that it would make the Trots who sell Socialist Worker vote Tory. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that Socialist Worker sellers were and still are on the same side as the Tories when it comes to supporting the overthrow of people’s democracies past and present.
    McDermid’s lack of understanding of left-wing politics should not necessarily diminish her abilities as a crime writer. Her politics can best be described as Guardian reading left-liberal; constantly exposing capitalism’s failings whilst showing an innate hostility to its only alternative. The book possibly represents an evolution in the development in the lead character Alison Burns from investigate journalist to private detective; two jobs with a very similar skill-set. In other words, watch out for future novels featuring the investigative journalist turned private-eye.