Garnethill by
Denise Mina
hbk out May 98
Published by Bantam
at £15.99
GARNETHILL was the winner of the 1998 John Creasey Memorial Dagger of the Crime Writers’ Association. If you read it, it’s not hard to see why.
Maureen has survived sexual abuse and psychiatry. Now she is stuck in a dead-end job and in a dead-end affair with Douglas, a seedy therapist. But life isn’t all bad - it also contains whisky and friendship.
Maureen decides to end her relationship with her married lover, only to find that someone else has pre-empted her decision: She wakes to discover Douglas strapped to her kitchen chair, with his throat slit.
The police are all too happy to categorise Maureen as an unstable witness and a possible suspect. Even her own family thinks she suffers from delusions. Not that the family itself is, from the point of view of the authorities, particularly reliable - her mother is an alcoholic and her brother, Liam, is a drug dealer. If she wants to clear herself, Maureen realises, she must find the killer herself. And in doing so she must confront herself and her past.
GARNETHILL is a sharp, compassionate and contemporary novel which not only works as a crime story but also examines how our society treats its victims. Denise Mina writes with wit, intelligence and knowledge. I look forward to her next book.
(
Andrew Taylor
- author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series)
Garnethill by
Denise Mina