Deborah Delano

With this strikingly sure-footed debut novel Deborah Delano brings a fresh contemporary female voice to English crime.  Set in a 1980s northern British city, THE SADDEST SOUND tells an authentic story of female grit and resistance to violence as, in the face of prejudice and indifference, a courageous pair of lesbian prostitutes ally with sympathetic radfems to expose a brutal and misogynistic serial killer.  Delano treats her dreadful and unsettling subject with insight, wit and candour.  The women entangled in this web of insanity are far from the conventional helpless victims traditional in the genre; they are visionary heroes, struggling for survival and cultural recognition in an environment of casual oppression.  Delano is currently at work on a second novel for publication in 2017.