She Treads Softly: 1989

Monday, October 10, 2022

1989

1989 by Val McDermid
10/11/22; 416 pages
Grove/Atlantic
Allie Burns #2

1989 by Val McDermid is a highly recommended second novel featuring investigative journalist Allie Burns and following events in 1989.

Allie Burns is running the northern news operation of the Sunday Globe, but she is till an investigative reporter at heart. While covering the memorial service for Lockerbie Pan Am bombing victims, she receives a lead over another story about HIV/AIDS patients and pharmaceutical companies. This is just the start as Allie covers 1989, an unsettling year that I wasn't sure I wanted to return to, but following Allie through the events was interesting. The plot mainly focuses on the Aids/HIV crisis, but also sends Allie to East Germany, covers Gorbachev, perestroika to the Berlin Wall coming down and numerous events in-between.

Allie and her girlfriend, Rona, are both fully realized characters who work well together in the narrative and help add depth to the plot. There are little details included in the plot that will take readers who remember back in time while the narrative also covers the bigger, news worthy topics from the time. There are plenty of little pop culture references included in the plot. The writing is excellent, as expected, but the novel did feel a little overly long and slow-moving. Perhaps covering so many well researched events from one year was a bit too much, but 1999 will be an interesting third novel to this series that started with 1979.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Grove/Atlantic via NetGalley.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.