Kick Back — Val McDermid

Fresh from her dazzling debut in Dead Beat, Manchester P.I. Kate Brannigan finds herself in search of some concrete evidence on a couple of dirty developers. The savvy and down-to-earth detective is reluctant to take on her secretary's new heartthrob, Ted Barlow, as a client: The chances are he's crooked, which would explain why the bank pulled the plug on his conservatory construction business. But when he mentions that some of the conservatories he installed have now vanished into thin air, Kate - despite herself - is hooked. How does a person go about stealing a building?
No sooner does she start investigating, though, than she gets involved in a second real-estate wrangle. A close friend has been conned over a land deal, and Kate agrees to find out how, and by whom. Neither problem seems life threatening - or so Kate thinks, until a strange "accident" proves to have been an attempt on her life.
Clearly Kate has stumbled upon something very rotten in real estate. And little do the criminals realize that in proposing to write Manchester's canny, kick-boxing P.I. out of the picture, they have signed a deed for their own downfall.