The Cornishman — George Donald

It's May 1982 and the United Kingdom is engaged in hostilities with Argentina over a small group of islands in the South Atlantic. However, while the media concentrates in the main on the conflict, the investigation following the discovery of a raped and murdered young woman in a Glasgow park falls on soon to retire Detective Chief Inspector Gordon McIntosh. Conscious that the park is soon to be visited by Pope John Paul II and several hundred thousand worshippers of the Catholic faith, a disgruntled McIntosh finds himself not only under political pressure to resolve the murder within a short space of time, but also unable to trust all the officers under his command. Added to McIntosh's problems, though the initial motive for the dead girl's murder seems relatively straightforward, it later emerges her murder instead might be connected to her father's chequered past with a vicious London gangster.