1st Lindsay Gordon Mystery by Val McDermid

Freelance journalist Lindsay Gordon is strapped for cash. Why else would she agree to cover a fund-raising gala at a girls’ public school? But when the star attraction is found garrotted with her own cello string minutes before she is due on stage, Lindsay finds herself investigating a vicious murder.

Reviews for Report for Murder

“Move over V.I. Warshawski” —Options

“McDermid has created a complex and prickly detective. The relationship intertwines a realistic romance with a solid detective story.” —Washington Times

“[She is] fresh and funny with a sparkling sense of time and place” —Literary Review

“This promising debut from a British writer introduces Lindsay Gordon, who mockingly describes herself as ‘a cynical socialist lesbian feminist journalist.’ Commissioned to write a story on Derbyshire House Girls’ School in the North of England, Lindsay encounters strong undercurrents of hatred—against developer James Cartwright, who wants to turn the school’s playing fields into holiday flats and a leisure complex, and against celebrated cellist and old girl Lorna Smith-Couper, who also appears to have a talent for making enemies and fomenting discord. During a fund-raising concert, Lorna is found strangled with a cello string, and schoolmistress Paddy Callaghan, an old friend of Lindsay’s, is charged with the murder. Lindsay sets out to solve the crime with the aid of noted playwright Cordelia Brown, another old girl, who had written and staged a play for the fund-raiser. McDermid has created a complex and prickly detective, whose working-class background sets her at odds with her companions, particularly her new lover, Cordelia.” —Publishers Weekly