Val McDermid 
PI Kate Brannigan Series Books 1-3 
Dead Beat, Kick Back, Crack Down

Three crime novels featuring Kate Brannigan – Machester’s most-loved private detective, a woman who won’t take no for an answer. ‘This is crime writing of the very highest order’ The Times DEAD BEAT: Kate Brannigan is a female private detective set to do for Manchester what V.I. Warshawski has done for Chicago. As a favour 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…KICK BACK: Kate Brannigan, feisty Manchester-based PI, is back, investigating 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 favour for a friend puts Kate’s own life in danger, bizarre is not the first word she thinks of…CRACK DOWN: PI Kate Brannigan only let her boyfriend help out with an investigation into a car sales fraud because she thought it was safe. But by now Kate should know that with Richard you have to expect the unexpected. Soon she finds herself dragged into a world of drug traffickers, child pornographers, fraudsters and violent gangland enforcers bringing her face to face with death in the most terrifying investigation of her career.