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.

A risky business

by Ben Soton

1979 by Val McDermid. Little Brown, London. Hardback (2021): 416pp; RRP: £20; Paperback (2022): 464pp; RRP: £8.99; Kindle (2021): 394pp; RRP: £4.99.

Val McDermid’s latest bestseller takes us back to the year of the Winter of Discontent, the first Scottish devolution referendum and what some might consider to be this country’s last Labour Government. Set around a fictional Scottish newspaper, The Clarion, we return to the pre-internet world of the typewriter and era long before the internet and mobile phones. In 1979 budding investigative journalists, Ali Burns and Danny Sullivan, uncover a tax-evasion scheme by the super-rich and attempts by extreme Scottish Nationalists to buy Semtex from the Provisional IRA.
    Burns stumbles across the group at a fringe meeting and follows them to an Italian restaurant; whilst Sullivan manages to gain the group’s confidence with relative ease. Meanwhile the Clarion’s Unionist editor, Angus Carlyle is keen to run the story as a means of discrediting the pro-independence lobby. The amateurish nature of the group is exposed when their IRA contact laughs at them for keeping money in a bank.
    The tax-evasion scheme tells how things have changed since the late 1970s when the wealthy were forced to hand over sizeable chunks of their ill-gotten gains. Tax-evasion was a laborious, not to mention risky affair, involving large amounts of ready cash being transported from one end of Britain to the other. The money would then be used to purchase luxury yachts which would then be sailed to the Caribbean and sold. Today the likes of Google and Amazon simply file tax returns in a draw marked B1N.
    The novel shines a light on the fringes of Scottish nationalism and its possible connection with Irish Republicanism; as well as dubious links between crime journalists and corrupt police officers. Journalistic rivalry from the Clarion’s Crime Correspondent, Gordon Beatie does not bode well for Sullivan while the the book also delves into Glasgow’s Gay underworld at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in Scotland.
    Despite a negative remark about the power of the print unions at the time Val McDermid’s novels are still worth reading. This is her first novel featuring Burns and Sullivan; where journalists rather than police officers are the focus of the story. It has been widely stated that the crime novel exposes capitalisms failings; McDermid's continues to do this well.