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Glasgow gangsters: 1979, by Val McDermid, reviewed

21 August 2021

9:00 AM

21 August 2021

9:00 AM

1979 Val McDermid

Little Brown, pp.432, 20

Like a basking shark, Val McDermid once remarked, a crime series needs to keep moving or die. The same could be said of crime writers themselves, who work in a genre that has an inbuilt tendency to encourage repetition, often with dreary results in the long term. McDermid herself, however, has a refreshing habit of rarely treading water for long.

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