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V.L. McDERMID
Report for Murder
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by The Women’s Press Ltd 1987
Copyright © Val McDermid 1987
Val McDermid asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007385089
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007301775
Version: 2018-04-06
For Gill
Contents
PART ONE: OVERTURE
PART TWO: EXPOSITION
PART THREE: FUGUE
PART FOUR: FINALE
PART FIVE: CODA
I grew up reading mysteries. From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell, from Rex Stout to Chandler and Hammett, I devoured them all. But what started me working on the first Lindsay Gordon novel, Report for Murder, in the mid-1980s was the chance to march to a different drum.
There was a new wave breaking on the shores of crime fiction, and it was led by women. Even though there had never been any shortage of female protagonists in the genre, you’d have been hard pressed to find many you could call feminists. But by the early 80s, a new breed of women had emerged.
They were mostly PIs, though there were a few amateurs among them. What marked them out was their politics. Whether they called themselves feminists or not, they were strong, independent women with a brain and a sense of humour, but most of all, they had agency. They didn’t shout for male help when the going got tough. They dealt with things on their own terms.
Another key difference was that these stories were organic. They weren’t random murders bolted on to a random setting. The crimes grew out of their environment – the particular jobs people did, the lives they led, the situations and recreations they were involved in.
devoured every one of those books I could get my hands on. Sara Paretsky, Barbara Wilson, viSue Grafton, Marcia Muller, Mary Wings, Katherine