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GARNETHILL
by Denise Mina
Back Bay Books, September 2007
432 pages
$13.99
ISBN: 0316016780


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

No one does ordinary people grinding out a living better than Denise Mina. And she portrays that to the full in GARNETHILL, the first book in a trilogy featuring Maureen O'Donnell.

Maureen's not your conventional lead character. She's an incest survivor, left with mental health problems, and now living in a tiny flat in Glasgow's Garnethill and working in the ticket office of a theatre.

Her tricky life is made even worse when she gets home late after a night on the tiles and crashes out in the bedroom. The next morning she discovers she's been sharing the flat with a dead body – that of Douglas, her therapist lover.

Maureen is like one of those toys that wobble but don't fall over. Despite the hard knocks she's been dealt, and the lack of support she gets from most of her dysfunctional family, she's tenacious enough to want to track down whoever is trying to frame her.

Her search takes her back to the psychiatric hospital where she uncovers a scandal from the past. And someone is willing to keep killing to cover up this secret.

Mina can write the socks off virtually anyone on the genre scene. But don't go reading GARNETTHILL if you're even faintly depressed. It's not a book to be read in one go – I found myself dipping into it over the course of a week.

It could have taken a strong edit in the middle where the tension sags as Maureen plods round town asking lots of questions and clashing with the police.

At times I forgot I was reading crime fiction, and the plot often does feel secondary. What makes this book a winner, though, is the vivid – and often painful – characterisation. Every person we meet feels like a fully-realised creation, from Maureen and her loyal friend Leslie down through the badly-damaged Siobhain to Martin the porter in his little den, and the little boy playing football on the street.

I'm a huge fan of Mina's Paddy Meehan series, and it's taken me a while to catch up with the Garnethill trilogy and yet another tough but flawed main character to add to an already impressive canon.

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, October 2007

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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