1979 Val McDermid

HACHETTE, $33

YMCA, by the Village People, and the Clash’s cover of I Fought the Law make Val McDermid’s appendix of music she listened to while writing her new novel set in Glasgow in 1979. It’s all part of sketching in the detail of an era for this, the first in internationally acclaimed Scottish author Val McDermid’s new series starring newspaper journalist Allie Burns. She’s the only female reporter on the newsdesk and is forced to work on serious pieces on the side in a bid to make her way off “light” stories. She and another reporter, Danny Sullivan, team up to work on a story that Danny has stumbled across, a planned expose of a criminal enterprise. But it’s the spot-on portrait of the workings of the smoke-filled newsroom that engages more rather than the interactions with the crooks.

ALISON WALSH VERDICT: Hot off the press