Dead Beat

By Patricia Hall

A tense and gripping mystery set in 1960s London and Liverpool - When photographer Kate O'Donnell takes off for London from swinging Liverpool she has two things in mind: to make a career and to track down her missing older brother. But when she does find a trace of Tom, he's still missing - leaving behind a dead flatmate and some very suspicious cops, including Harry Barnard of the vice squad. Kate determines to clear her brother's name, but her investigations take her on a terrifying journey, and soon she isn't sure if even the charming Barnard can be trusted . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Severn House Publishers
• Release date: Dec 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781780100791

Patricia Hall

Patricia Hall is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Reviews for Dead Beat

[adonisguilfoyle · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I am very, very glad that I found a cheap, ex-library copy of this book, and didn't pay the full (extortionate) Kindle price, because I can ill afford to waste the money. What a disappointment! I have read better crime novels about the underbelly of 1960s London by Jake Arnott and William Shaw, and the author should have heeded the cliché 'Write about what you know', because she patently has little or no personal experience of Liverpool. Bandying the words 'la' and 'kidder' does not a scouser make, sorry, Patricia Hall. In fact, I think she looked up Liverpool, London and key personalities and events of the 1960s on Wikipedia, then decided to write a book around her research. The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Cavern Club, Soho, vice and homosexuality are all thrown in for good measure, and the scousers spout dialogue like, 'Where are you from then, la? My lot are in Anfield, used to be in Scottie Road. We can hear the cheers on match days now'. I kept expecting the scousers from Harry Enfield's sketch show to make a cameo appearance - 'Eh! Eh! All right, now, calm down!'I wouldn't even mind the decade-by-numbers approach, if Hall's own characters were in any way original, but there's the handsome vice detective with a heart of gold - and a gay brother - and the spunky female photographer with a Mary Quant bob and a nose for trouble. Dolly bird Kate O'Donnell heads south to the Big Smoke, looking for her big chance and her little brother, who is into some unsavoury business involving gay pornography. She is followed by an ex from the Pool, who is also in a band, and meets another scouser selling flowery shirts to men on Carnaby Street, and they all - regardless of gender - call each other 'la'. The mystery, such as it is, devolves into a hackneyed and rather naive parboiled detective novel about bent coppers and greedy underworld bosses. I just got fed up with all the clichés and stereotypes, and the whole thing is barely two hundred pages long.