Reviews

The author of Star Struck was for many years a journalist with one of Britain's tabloid newspapers and this experience has clearly influenced the style of her Kate Brannigan detective novels. McDermid's prose is matter-of-fact and her plots are pitched at the throngs of crime fiction readers who want nothing more than a quick, entertaining murder mystery to read on the train to work. And lest you think that I am denigrating her work by describing it in these terms, I must here state that McDermid is but one of an illustrious procession of British crime novelists (Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers) who have mastered this genre and garnered a loyal following of readers in the process. So all power to her. In this novel, the Manchester PI is reluctantly coerced into acting as bodyguard to Gloria Kendal, an actress in the popular television soap opera `Northerners'. Gloria has been receiving threatening letters and wants Kate to find out who they are coming from. During the investigation a murder is committed and the PI's job suddenly becomes trickier than she had originally expected. Star Struck is a competent, if uninspired, whodunit featuring a feisty female PI. It will no doubt sell accordingly. Virginia Maxwell is a Melbourne-based reviewer. C. 1999 Thorpe-Bowker and contributors