It’s New Years Eve when Rosa Makepeace the Dispatch’s youngest reporter takes a call that a local prostitute has been found murdered. Keen to succeed in her chosen profession, Rosa is torn between her excitement at working on a real hot story and her compassion for the dead girl.
Clearly a novice reporter, her attempts at eliciting information and interviewing people were initially clumsy and then gradually, as one piece of information leads her to another she began to grow into the job, always conscious of the need to prove herself in her male-dominated world..
When a second body is discovered, she finds that her enquires into the first murder point to links to the second murder, and she eagerly writes a piece for her paper that brings her into direct conflict with the police and antagonises several influential people in the town.
Her romance with an unsuitable man, her growing friendship with Sylvia Playfare, Mrs Ross, her landlady and the suitable suitor lurking in the background, all paint an excellent picture of life in Edinburgh in the 1950's.
Tracy Wiles hits just the right note with Rosa, projecting into her voice,
youth, apprehension and excitement with the job, all at the same time. She does
an equally good job with the amused laconic upperclass accent of the older Sylvia,
and the fussy tones of Rosa’s Aunt. In all an excellent portrayal.
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Lizzie Hayes