Val McDermid's ambitious project of chronicling each decade's highlights, showing how big and small events relate to individuals, takes another leap forward with the enthralling 1989, the logical follow-up to 1979. Through the lens of investigative journalist Allie Burns, McDermid (How the Dead Speak; Broken Ground; The Vanishing Point) dramatizes how major events influence subsequent decades. Setting her novels at the end of each decade allows McDermid--and Allie--to reflect on what has transpired during the past 10 years and examine how the world changes.
The newspaper's wealthy, narcissistic owner has reassigned Allie from her investigative reporting job in Glasgow, Scotland, to a post in Manchester, England. The job and Manchester suit her; she and her partner, Rona Dunsyre, create a life filled with friends. Rona's family accepts her relationship with Allie, though Allie's family does not. Allie, as a journalist, has a window on major world events, which McDermid seamlessly incorporates into her work, including the AIDS crisis and how pharmaceutical companies withheld drugs; East Berlin and the Soviet Union; the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie; the deadly football riot in Sheffield.
This second novel in the Allie Burns series delves even more deeply into Allie's psyche. Covering all these tragedies has taken a psychological toll, and she reevaluates her career choice. Allie and Rona's relationship deepens, with Rona emerging as even more essential to Allie's personal and professional life. A playlist of McDermid's personal top 40 music enhances 1989, a novel that accentuates the decade's advances and failures. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer