Digital List Price:	$17.99
Kindle Price:	$11.99 Save $6.00 (33%)
Sold by:	Amazon.com Services LLC

Promotions apply when you purchase

Read with our free app

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Follow the author

Val McDermid

+ Follow

More books from this author

Report for Murder & Common Murder (The Lindsay Gordon Mysteries Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Val McDermid (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

3.6 1,857 ratings

Book 1 of 3: The Lindsay Gordon Mysteries

See all formats and editions

In one volume, the first two mysteries featuring a journalist who investigates murder, from the Diamond Dagger winner known as “Britain’s Queen of Crime” (The Times).

From the Edgar Award-nominated author of the DCI Karen Pirie series, this two-in-one volume includes:

Report for Murder

Self-proclaimed cynical socialist-lesbian-feminist and freelance journalist Lindsay Gordon is strapped for cash. Why else would she agree to cover a fund-raising gala at a girls’ public school? But when the star attraction is found garroted with her own cello string moments before she is due on stage, Lindsay finds herself investigating a vicious murder.

“A timeless mystery, well-plotted with crisp dialogue and solid characterization.”―Orlando Sun-Sentinel

Common Murder

When her former lover is accused of murder—at a women’s peace protest, no less—Lindsay must bring all of her expertise as an investigative reporter into play—and uncovers a truth even she can scarcely believe.
“McDermid’s snappy, often comic prose keeps the story humming.”―Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This promising debut from a British writer introduces Lindsay Gordon, who mockingly describes herself as "a cynical socialist lesbian feminist journalist." Commissioned to write a story on Derbyshire House Girls' School in the North of England, Lindsay encounters strong undercurrents of hatred--against developer James Cartwright, who wants to turn the school's playing fields into holiday flats and a leisure complex, and against celebrated cellist and old girl Lorna Smith-Couper, who also appears to have a talent for making enemies and fomenting discord. During a fund-raising concert, Lorna is found strangled with a cello string, and schoolmistress Paddy Callaghan, an old friend of Lindsay's, is charged with the murder. Lindsay sets out solve the crime with the aid of noted playwright Cordelia Brown, another old girl, who had written and staged a play for the fund-raiser. McDermid has created a complex and prickly detective, whose working-class background sets her at odds with her companions, particularly her new lover, Cordelia. The shifting relationship intertwines a realistic romance with a solid detective story.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

The first US publication of a novel that appeared in 1987 in England. Here, gay journalist Lindsay Gordon (Deadline for Murder, 1997, etc.), based in Glasgow and presently freelancing to eke out a living, makes her debut when longtime friend Paddy Callaghan, a drama teacher at the Derbyshire House Girls' School, gets her a magazine assignment for a story on the school's fund-raising weekendan event that's part of the schools battle to fend off builder James Cartwright, who wants to buy its athletic fields for residential development. Other weekend guests include novelist/talk-show star Cordelia Brown and famed cellist Lorna Smith-Coupey. As the audience awaits a benefit concert that evening, Lorna is discovered dead-garrotted by a cello stringin one of the backstage music rooms. In short order, a truculent Inspector Dart has jailed Paddy for the killing, and school head Pamela Overton has authorized Lindsay and Cordelia (lovers at first sight) to try to find evidence to clear Paddy. A string of tedious interviews, plus repetitive reviews of time frames and alibis, produces a host of Lorna-hating suspects, but it's a second death that pushes our journalist-sleuth to a violent confrontation with the not-so-surprising killer. Clumsy plotting, relentlessly verbose characters, and a sluggish pace don't help Lindsay's overextended debut outingone of the author's lesser efforts. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B088LRBT81
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Grove Press (March 20, 2018)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 20, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 5220 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 354 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #462,915 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #782 in LGBTQ+ Mystery (Kindle Store)
- #2,532 in International Mystery & Crime (Kindle Store)
- #3,155 in International Mystery & Crime (Books)

Customer Reviews:
3.6 1,857 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Val McDermid

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Val McDermid is a number one bestseller whose novels have been translated into more than forty languages, and have sold over eighteen million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009, was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2010 and received the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award in 2011. In 2016, Val received the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival and in 2017 received the DIVA Literary Prize for Crime, and was elected a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Val has served as a judge for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize, and was Chair of the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017. She is the recipient of six honorary doctorates and is an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She writes full-time and divides her time between Edinburgh and East Neuk of Fife.

Customer reviews

3.6 out of 5

1,857 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

W Spice

Dated, but still very enjoyable

Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2012

Verified Purchase

Soi-disant "cynical socialist lesbian feminist journalist" Lindsay Gordon travels to an English girls' public school during a weekend fundraiser, agreeing to help publicize the need for funds as a favor to an old friend, Paddy Callaghan. During the course of weekend, the fund-raising concert's star attraction is murdered, and Paddy is soon arrested. The school's headmistress enlists the aid of Lindsay, and former student ("old girl," as the Brit's would say) Cordelia Brown, noted author, to prove Paddy's innocence. The two are hardly experienced criminal investigators, and their lack of experience shows. Even so, their loyalty and determination stand them in good stead.

For a first novel, the mystery is pretty solidly plotted, and our intrepid heroines don't allow their budding attraction to interfere with their sleuthing. In finest who-done-it form, there are suspects aplenty, and the bulk of the novel involves Lindsay and Cordelia interviewing them. So, if you're looking for an action-packed thriller, this ain't it, folks. What it is,though, is a helluva lot of fun, a very pleasant, and at times, satisfyingly quirky, read.

Sure, it's a little dated, having been published originally in 1987, but it weathers quite well. After all, people are still reading Sherlock Holmes, right? And, for readers in the US, the style is pretty darned British, though not forbiddingly so. In any case, the mystery is interesting enough, and the reading experience more than fun enough, to overcome those slight drawbacks.

Definitely recommended. Even as a (then) new author, McDermid was far and away ahead of many current best-selling writers, even those with more experience. I'll definitely be reading the others in this series at some point. Nice to see this old series in very affordable e-format.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

K_Win

Lyndsay Gordon Book 1

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2014

Verified Purchase

Val McDermid is a wonderful writer. She weaves a tale that bound me to the book and the character. I could not wait to read the sequel. I thought it was very well done. The combination of romance and mystery kept me hanging. Enjoy

Helpful

Kindle Customer

The plot was pretty predictable and there were not surprises

Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2015

Verified Purchase

Not up to the Val McDermid writings I've read before. The plot was pretty predictable and there were not surprises. I thought the characters were uneven and the quick pace of the book left room for character development; it's like Val had to get a book out and this is what she came up with. I was a bit disappointed.

Helpful

Amazon Customer

A bit too Enid Blyton for me.

Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2011

Verified Purchase

Having read several of her later books I was looking forward to this one but was very disappointed.
This could have been one of Enid Blytons Famous Five stories apart from the sexual orientation of a few characters and that they were knocking back whisky instead of lashings of ginger beer!
Really would the headmistress of a private girls school ask a journalist to hang around after someone is murdered at the school - surely you would want the journalist as far away as possible. And allowing said journalist to question staff and pupils, particularly the pupils without a suitable adult present - sorry but too unbelievable for me.
For those concerned about the lesbian aspects don't be to worried there are no detailed descriptions of bedroom antics.
Had I read this book before any others I would have steered clear of Val MacDermid but really this is so different from her later books, too tame for me.

Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2014

Verified Purchase

wasn't sure I would like this book, but good character development and good story. Interesting plot. Will read more of this series now.

Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2015

Verified Purchase

What I liked most about this book was how easy it could draw you into the story, there where no complications or struggles to follow the plot, and no backhanded Details to trip you up half-way through. It's a perfect who don it with a little lesbianism on the side

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Scott W.

Good story

Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2020

Verified Purchase

A bit too long and a little tedious. Not as good as others of hers I have read. Interesting story but not worth the rime.

Helpful

porthos

Like Tony & Carol Beter

Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2014

Verified Purchase

My personal preference is the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series. I find their characters far more developed than that of Linsay Gordon. I felt that Report for Murder was more in solving the puzzle and less on character development. Even so McDermid is still my favorite author for this genre.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

shannon

Good read

Reviewed in Canada on June 16, 2023

Verified Purchase

Good, solid lesbian mystery. More of a cozy book than her later ones, and with good, entertaining characters.

Craig M Sisterson

Back where a legend began

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 16, 2018

Verified Purchase

Last year at the Bloody Scotland crime writing festival, Val McDermid and Ian Rankin led a torchlit parade from Stirling Castle (where the festival was officially opened) down through the historic town centre. Fittingly, the King and Queen of 'Tartan Noir' (and legends far beyond those borders) were each celebrating 30 years of their crime writing careers.

While McDermid is well-known for delving deep into the darkness in her hugely popular series starring detective Carol Jordan and profiler Tony Hill (books and characters which were adapted into the television series Wire in the Blood), and her fascinating bestsellers starring cold case detective Karen Pirie, thirty years ago it all began with two journalists: Val, and Lindsay Gordon.

What may surprise some crime-lovers who've become McDermid fans in the last twenty years, is that her very first book was more of a classic Christie-style murder mystery, in a way. Not cosy, but definitely veering much more towards that end of the crime-mystery spectrum than her later books.

Of course, McDermid still brought something fresh to her debut story - especially for the late 1980s - Lindsay Gordon was a protagonist who was working class, politically inclined, and and out lesbian. Quite different from the often intellectual, rather sexless sleuths of the classic mystery form.

Gordon is sent from Glasgow to Derbyshire to cover a fundraiser at a hoity-toity girls school (in the UK it's called a public school, but elsewhere we'd call these 'private schools' - high schools largely for children of the well-off, somewhat removed from the everyday national education system). The environment immediately irks Gordon, a 1980s lefty battling Thatcherite times and struggling financially. Gordon self-identifies as a "cynical socialist feminist lesbian", so McDermid doesn't leave the reader in any doubt. And that's one of the things that distinguishes REPORT FOR MURDER from McDermid's later work - she lays quite a lot out for the reader, with more exposition and set-up.

It's a good read, that flows well and has plenty of interest for readers. I thoroughly enjoyed 'going back to the beginning' to see McDermid in more of her raw early form. While the storytelling isn't as tight or gritty as her later work, there's still a lot to enjoy in REPORT FOR MURDER.

McDermid brings the country public school setting to vivid life; its physical environment and the characters who inhabit it. There's some interesting character interplay, including a hot-cold budding relationship for Lindsay Gordon. It's hard to know looking back from where we are now, but I imagine it was quite groundbreaking at the time: a lesbian relationship portrayed quite matter-of-factly as if it was just any old romance, rather than highlighting it as something unusual or 'edgy'.

All in all, REPORT FOR MURDER delivers a more Christie or Sayers-type mystery than later fans of McDermid may have expected, a murder mystery in a somewhat closed environment, with an amateur sleuth interviewing the suspects and witnesses in order to try and unmask the killer.

13 people found this helpful