Garnethill
From the Costa Prize-Shortlisted Author of The Less Dead
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
'The most exciting crime writer to have emerged in Britain for years' Ian Rankin
GIRLFRIEND. WITNESS. MURDERER?
When psychiatric patient Maureen O'Donnell finds her boyfriend dead in her living room, she is thrown into a difficult situation. Glasgow police view her as both a suspect and an unstable witness - and even her mother is convinced of her involvement.
Feeling betrayed by friends and family, Maureen begins to doubt her own version of events. Panic-stricken, she sets out in pursuit of the truth and soon picks up a horrifying trail of deception and suppressed scandal. Then a second body is discovered. Maureen realises that unless she gets to the killer first, her life is in danger...
'One of the most original voices in crime fiction' Daily Mail
With an introduction by VAL McDERMID
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*Don't miss Denise Mina's most recent thriller, the Costa 2020 shortlisted, THE LESS DEAD*
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
From its opening pages, this winner of the 1998 John Creasy Memorial Award for best first crime novel pulls readers inexorably into the tortured world of sexual abuse victims and their struggle to survive as whole people. Eight months after spending almost half a year in a Glasgow psychiatric hospital devoted to treating sex abuse victims, Maureen O'Donnell is desperately trying to hold together her shattered life. Bored with her job at a theater ticket office and depressed because her affair with one of the hospital's doctors, Douglas Brady, is over, Maureen and a friend get drunk. The next morning Maureen finds Brady's body in her living room, his throat cut. With bloody footprints matching Maureen's slippers at the scene, Detective Chief Inspector Joe McEwan sets out to prove the woman's guilt. He's not alone in thinking her the culprit: to Maureen's shock, both her alcoholic mum and Douglas's politician mother also think she's the killer. Convincing them that she isn't becomes her goal. She picks up a rumor about one of the hospital therapists having sex with a patient and learns that, before his death, Douglas gave formerly hospitalized victims large sums of money. Maureen begins to suspect Douglas's killing is connected to the hospital's clinic. Did a relative of a molested client kill Douglas? Or was the deceased about to turn in a colleague who raped patients? With sharp dialogue and painfully vulnerable characters, Mina brings Maureen's world of drug dealers, broken families, sanctimonious health-care workers and debilitated victims to startling life. Maureen's valiant struggle to act sane in an insane world will leave readers seeing sex abuse victims in a new light.
Customer Reviews
Great début
A very strong début, this Glasgow-set novel of murder and rape is populated with strongly-drawn characters, is shot through with a surprising amount of humour, and has a satisfying (and, thankfully, not Hollywood) ending. Oh, it's also very, very Scottish. Recommended
A must read
Riveting and writing of excellence.
Feminist Fatale
This is a hard read for a man but worth it as Maureen is a character grounded in the real world. If you are lucky enough to know an number of Glasgow women you’ll know someone like her, a cocktail of of outer contradictory qualities tough, needy, intelligent, daft, confident and insecure. Anyway the climax of this murderous and abusive story is exciting if not entirely surprising.
I did not find the mixture of a real Glasgow and invented Glasgow entirely convincing but that is a small complaint about a worthwhile read