This is the sixth (and so far the final) novel featuring Val McDermid’s appealing private investigator Kate Brannigan. In the run up to Christmas Kate has been retained to protect Gloria Kendal, one of the leading stars in ‘Northerners’, a hugely popular long-running soap opera set in the Manchester area (I wonder what that could be modelled upon!), who has been plagued with threatening poison pen letters.

Meanwhile her friend and self-defence trainer, Dennis, finds himself under arrest after a the body is found in a shop-squat he has been running. Convinced of Dennis’s innocence, despite his long track record of organised crime across the Manchester gangland, Kate undertakes to investigate to try to clear him. And it has started snowing heavily!

As always with Val McDermid, the plot is perfectly plausible and well-constructed, and the characters are utterly believable. She uses the plot to satirise the world of soap operas, and draws on her own experiences as a journalist to expose the traffic in leaked plotlines and cast members’ secrets. Brannigan is a great character: independent and tough, yet also capable of great emotional insight. Without the gory serial murders that characterise McDermid’s later works, this is a traditional detective story – well planned and well written. ( )

Readable and quite fun; love the Mancunian background and the very obvious references to Coronation Street. Not as good as her Tony Hill books. ( )