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Val McDermid’s sequel to 1979 is as good on the social context and historical placement, but not so good as a story: McDermid goes wildly macro, taking on the Iron Curtain, placing her characters in outlandish peril and, in some ways, recycling herself.

1989 tells two stories: frustrated investigative reporter Allie Burns decides to research shoddy AIDS treatments off her own bat, while her Murdoch-rival boss (and architect of her professional misery), Ace Lockhart, despatches his daughter Genevieve on a tour of the Eastern Bloc to secure publishing support in anticipation of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Allie, a nascent lesbian by the end of 1979, emerges here as a veteran lesbian of nigh on a decade, with a committed relationship, a dog, and an immaculately maintained garden to her name. McDermid is clearly comfortable with Allie and Rhona duo (politely ignoring that they are at least in part modeled after herself), and they make the book feel lived in. For domesticity and the day to day of their life in the eighties, 1989 can’t be beaten.

However, once Allie crosses a certain Rubicon in the story, it’s difficult to take the narrative seriously. The level of risk does not really match the level of reward, and it’s difficult to say whether the story that Allie pursues would have had an impact at the time; at the very least, it’s out of the purview of the book. The Lockhart thread shows promise but in its attempt to dovetail with Allie’s story it bogs itself down: its conclusion is one that McDermid has used herself in the last decade, mixed with another; it lacks the capacity to surprise. Despite this, 1989 has that compulsive McDermid spice, so there’s no problem in finishing it.

This is the sort of book that you want to believe is well-researched, but when it touches on a field of special interest or knowledge of your own, you have to challenge it. Unable to sleep, Allie picks up a Discworld novel � specifically Carpe Jugulum. This one could be put down to a simple transposition in research, as Carpe Jugulum was published in 1998. For future reprints, McDermid could get away with saying that Allie read Wyrd Systers (1988), without having to change any other text. Or nobody other than me will notice or care about the error � a possibility that I’m entirely prepared to live with.

McDermid is almost always readable, and while Allie takes some stupid risks none of the character actions between these pages come close to the nadir of the Carol Jordan series. 1989 is a worthwhile read, even as you wait for a series of pennies to drop (if you don’t know that the Berlin Wall fell, you’re going to be in for a shock at the end of 1989).