Book Log 2022 #57: 1989 by Val McDirmid

Allie Burns, the protagonist of 1979, is still working in journalism, no longer as an investigative reporter  but as an editor for a thinly-veiled version of Robert Maxwell. Still, her instincts for a story lead her to look into why so many AIDS patients from Scotland are winding up in Manchester (where she now lives with her partner), a question that ultimately leads her to Berlin, where she's also doing some digging around for her boss, who has a sense of the coming post-Soviet era and wants to get in on the ground floor. And along the way she also covers the Hillsborough stadium collapse, providing an eyewitness account of the chaos surrounding that disaster.

Reviews for the book were mixed, mostly complaining about the pacing and lack of tension compared to the first book. I don't recall it being that slow. It could be that the book tries to cover too much ground, though it would be hard to write a book set in 1989 and not talk about the AIDS epidemic or Hillsborough. Maybe trying to shoehorn the Maxwell story into this was one story too many?

I like the book fine, and am interested in continuing on (it's apparently planned as a five book series).