McDermid takes readers back to the close of the 1970s; the good old days when misogyny and racism were an accepted fact of life. Journalist Allie Burns is already sick of 1979 and it’s only January, but the chaos of terrible weather and the breakdown of both political and labor groups has her thinking now might be the time to report real news, not human interest, or “women’s stories”. She joins forces with a new journalist, Danny Sullivan, and together they begin poking into some of the hottest stories of the time. Before long, the duo find themselves household names, as their careers take off, but as they soon discover, there’s a price to be paid for those stories, one that may be far too high. An intriguing start to a new series that brings back the days before cell phones, the internet and DNA.