Dead beat and kick back: kate brannigan mysteries #1 and #2 - 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 shes up to her neck in crooked land deals, mortgage scams, financial chicanery and murder.

But when a favor for a friend puts Kates own life in danger, bizarre is not the first word she thinks of.