Authors: Denise Mina
ISBN-13: 9780316015639, ISBN-10: 0316015636
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Date Published: March 2010
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Denise Mina is the author of Slip of the Knife, The Dead Hour, Field of Blood, Deception, and the Garnethill trilogy, the first installment of which won her the John Creasey Memorial Prize for best first crime novel. She lives in Glasgow.
Alex Morrow is not new to the police force—or to crime—but there is nothing familiar about the call she has just received. On a still night in a quiet suburb of Glasgow, Scotland, three armed men have slipped from a van into a house, demanding a man who is not, and has never been, inside the front door. In the confusion that ensues, one family member is shot and another kidnapped, the assailants demanding an impossible ransom. Is this the amateur crime gone horribly wrong that it seems, or something much more unexpected?
The book really has everything you want in a crime novel: enormous suspense, acerbic wit, arresting detail, and an ever-mutating plot. But there is improbable sweetness here too. There is a word I would never have used to describe Denise Mina's work until now; but the truth is, this intense, fast-moving crime drama is, in the end, utterly charming.