Fiction: Val McDermid's 1979 rises to the top
Val McDermid’s 1979 (Sphere) leapfrogged Kay Featherstone and Kate Allinson’s Pinch of Nom Comfort Food (Bluebird) to claim the UK Official Top 50 number one through Nielsen BookScan’s TCM. This was McDermid’s fourth week at the top, five years after Out of Bounds notched up her first overall top spot. The new title, which kicks off the Allie Burns series, becomes the first fiction number one of the year, and is in fact the first female-authored novel to top the charts since Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You (Faber) in September 2021.
McDermid claimed her sixth Mass Market Fiction number one, as Andrea Mara’s All Her Fault (Penguin) leapt 11 places into sixth. Cathy Kelly’s Other Women (Orion) and Greg Buchanan’s Waterstones Thriller of the Month, Sixteen Horses (Pan), debuted in the top 20.
Rebecca Ross’ fantasy title A River Enchanted (HarperVoyager) swam into the Original Fiction number one in its first week on sale, notching up second place in the Top 50. James Patterson and Howard Roughan’s Steal (Century) swiped six place in Original Fiction, jumping into the top 10, as J D Robb, Nora Roberts’ crime-writing pen name, scored 13th place with Abandoned in Death (Piatkus).
