Product Description

'This is crime writing of the very highest order ! Kate Brannigan has turned into the most interesting sleuthess around' The Times Bodyguarding had never made it to Manchester PI Kate Brannigan's wish list. But somebody's got to pay the bills at Brannigan & Co, and if the only earner on offer is playing nursemaid to a paranoid soap star, the fast-talking computer-loving white collar crime expert has to swallow her pride and slip into something more glam than her Thai boxing kit. Then offstage dramas threaten to overshadow the fictional storylines till the unscripted murder of the self-styled 'Seer to the Stars' stops the show, leaving Kate with more questions than answers. And you just can't get the help these days. Her process server keeps getting arrested; her tame hacker has found virtual love; her best friend is besotted with baby; and the normally reliable Dennis has had the temerity to get himself arrested for murder as a result of his latest dodgy business venture. Nobody told her there'd be days like these!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #88796 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 368 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
All series thrillers have an element of the soap opera about them, and so it is logical that Val McDermid's sixth novel about Manchester private eye Kate Brannigan should take her into the world of television soaps. Tough computer-literate Brannigan is hired as bodyguard to the star of Northerners, which bears an uncanny resemblance to another soap filmed in Manchester. Brassy Gloria has been warned by her clairvoyant that death is in the offing, but it is the clairvoyant who gets her skull smashed with a crystal ball. Meanwhile, someone is leaking plot lines, Kate's burglar chum is accused of murder when he takes up honest work, and her staff find themselves in sexual predicaments.

There is a charm to all of this, and some intelligent puzzles competently worked through; McDermid knows, or competently invents, the social milieux she describes. The book is particularly good on the feel of the Northwest on a raw winter day--McDermid's writing gets better and better. This book, though, lacks some of the vigour of the earlier Brannigan books and their note of social protest. Her fans will have no complaints, but this is not the best of her books. --Roz Kaveney

Review
'Combines wit and exuberant writing with a careful and clever plot and oodles of perceptive social observation' The Times 'McDermid is at her best when describing the petty crimes and scams that flourish in her Northern city! the book has considerable charm' Mail on Sunday 'Written with fluent ease, making use of Kate Brannigan's own distinctive voice, Star Struck is a clever novel as well as an entertaining one' TLS 'Contemporary feminist crime at its finest' Good Housekeeping

About the Author
Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community and then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. She is now a full-time writer and lives in south Manchester.

Customer Reviews

Sharp, funny and right in touch with contemporary life
Star Struck is a must for anyone who has ever watched a soap opera. McDermid takes us inside the world behind the scenes and is not at all star-struck at the antics of the cast of her ficitonal soap opera. The dialogue is, as always, very realistic and often very funny indeed. And there's a clever murder mystery worked out as well when the Seer to the Stars gets bumped off without seeing it coming.

Great story but a little too PC for some tastes
This Kate Branigan adventure rolls along at a fair old pace and is a great read from start to finish. Val McDermid may not be the greatest writer in the world. (Check out some of her early Branigan books - they read like the work of someone straight off a creative writing course) but she is undoubtedly an excellent storyteller and gets the reader turning those pages to see what happens next. Her real ability is to produce a simple yet engaging plot that makes you want to keep going until you find out 'whodunit'.

Unfortunately what lets the whole book down (and the Kate Branigan series in general) is the relentless 'right on' attitudes shown by the author. There is never any danger of the reader being allowed to forget where Val McDermid' s political and social sensibilities lie. You just know that certain groups will always be seen as 'good' and others as 'bad'. So (most) women, lesbians, gays, those differently sexual (transsexuals/transvestites) and those from ethnic minorities will be noble, put upon, hard done by and exploited. Whilst virtually all men (especially those middle class and white) will inevitably be stupid, brutish and nasty.

The only exceptions being the nerdy men (such as boyfriend Richard and Computer expert 'Gizmo' who are tolerated by the never ending stream of clever, witty, brilliant women who inhabit the Branigan books. From Kate herself to her female friends such as the ace crime reporter; dazzling Police Chief Inspector and unbeatable Solicitor. All leaders in their field and who without doubt would be at the very top were it not for the aforementioned chauvinistic, bullying but ultimately useless middle class men in their respective professions keeping them down. Indeed one ongoing male Police Inspector is so unremittingly stupid and idiotic it is a wonder he keeps his job, little loan ever achieved his rank in the first place.

The ultimate irony of course being that McDermid is as prejudiced as those she clearly sets out to parody and ridicule. Which is a shame, because if you removed the bolted on PC stuff, the Branigan Books are really very good indeed So if you want to indulge in a little feminist/lesbian wish fulfilment, this is the book for you. Those wanting more realistic crime novels, try Ian Rankin's 'Rebus' series.

A great read
More often than not books and films with humorous undertones tend to get less critical acclaim. Unfairly, this also seems to be the case with Val McDermid's Lindsay Gordon and Kate Brannigan books. However, after reading the superb but very dark The Mermaids Singing, and the almost more gruelling The Wire in the Blood, fans must delighted in being able to return to the light relief of Star Struck. In Star Struck, having bought out her partner in the detective agency, Kate Brannigan has gone solo. Against her better judgement Kate agrees to become the bodyguard to Gloria Kendal, star of a television drama that has disturbing similarities to Coronation Street. Once on board, the Manchester PI gets to experience the day-to-day goings on of a television star, and also manages to clear up a spot of blackmail as well as apprehend a murderer. With Star Struck Val McDermid and Kate Brannigan have come along way. The author, having now tackled various genres of crime writing, has honed her ability to give a greater depth to the heroine she created in Dead Beat in 1992. The plotting is taught, the one-liners are funny and come fast and furious, and all the characters are three dimensional and believable. Regardless of which McDermid books you prefer, they inevitably are a great read.

Adrian Muller.