About the Book

As a favor to her rock journalist boyfriend, Kate agrees to track down a missing song-writer Moira Pollock, a search that takes her into some of the seediest parts of Leeds and Bradford. But little does she realise that finding Moira is only a prelude to murder. Juggling her other cases, including a search to uncover the source of counterfeit luxury goods, Brannigan finds herself for the first time on the trail of a killer.

In Kick Back, Kate Brannigan investigates the bizarre case of the missing conservatories. Before long she’s up to her neck in crooked land deals, mortgage scams, financial chicanery and murder. But when a favor for a friend puts Kate’s own life in danger, bizarre is not the first word she thinks of . . .

Praise

“The story and characters are convincing and Kate is an attractively persistent sleuth whom I hope to see again.” —Sunday Telegraph on Dead Beat

“You’d have to go far to meet a tougher girl gumshoe.” —Mike Ripley, Daily Telegraph on Dead Beat

“Fresh and funny, with a spanking sense of time and place.” —Literary Review on Dead Beat

“Kate Brannigan is a sparky, funny and much to be welcomed entrant into the still tiny profession of the female private eye.” —The Times Saturday Review on Dead Beat

“McDermid’s snappy, often comic prose keeps the story humming as Kate is drawn deeper and deeper into the twisted plot of her first murder investigation.” —Publishers Weekly on Dead Beat

“Kate Brannigan deserves promotion to the top rank, alongside Kinsey Millhone and V.I. Warshawski. Plot, characterisation, pace are all first-rate, and the bouncy Brannigan is one of the most likeable of all todays PIs.” —Sunday Telegraph on Kick Back