Patricia Hall is the penname of Maureen O’Connor, a former journalist on the Guardian who now writes fiction full-time from her home in Garsington. Her first series of crime thrillers, with journalist sleuth Laura Ackroyd, was set in her home town of Bradford. Dead Beat (Creme de la Crime, £19.99) is the first in a new series about photographer Kate O’Donnell. In this story, she has left her home in 1960s Liverpool to track down her missing brother, Tom, in London's Soho.