Garnethill: A Novel of Crime (Garnethill Trilogy #01)

1998 John Creasy Memorial Award for Best First Crime Novel

At once wry and shocking, humane and raw, ironic and visceral, Denise Mina brings a distinctive new voice to crime fiction in this gritty, award-winning debut novel set in the grim precincts of Glasgow's Garnethill. There the unlucky Maureen O'Donnell wakes up one fuzzy-headed morning to discover her therapist-boyfriend in the middle of the living room, tied to one of her kitchen chairs, with his throat slit clean through. Recently recovered from a breakdown, Maureen now finds herself the prime suspect in a grisly murder case. Harassed by the police and hounded by the press, she sets out to reconstruct her dead lover's last days and uncovers a dire trail of rape, deception, and suppressed scandal at a local psychiatric hospital. When a second mutilated corpse surfaces, she realizes hers could be the third. It's time for Maureen to get lucky.

"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." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"This raw, powerful stroy is an exeptional debut. Denise Mina is definitely one to watch." Kansas City Star

"A groundbreaking book that should help finally establish women writers as a credible faction within the hard boiled genre....Its emotional rawness and visceral honesty pack a punch more than any boxer-turned PI could provide." Washington Post Book World

"Mina writes with a pen dipped alternately in gallows humor and rage." Kirkus Reviews

"This debut novel...provides a fascinating look at the seamier side of life in Glasgow. It also provides insights into some who treat mental illness and some of the treated." Booklist

"A compelling story....This is the reason we read mysteries." Rocky Mountain News

"The writing isn't pretty, but you can't look away from it....[Maureen observes] that 'visible scars are a good way to stop casual approaches from the happy and content.'" Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review