Dead Beat and Kick Back: Kate Brannigan Mysteries '1 and '2, Paperback/Val McDermid

Dead Beat introduces Kate Brannigan, a Thai boxing, rock-and-roll female private detective from Manchester. 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...