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Gods And Beasts
by Denise Mina (Orion Books, £12.99)
Tuesday 19 March 2013
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EmailSince the publication of her first novel Garnethill in 1998, Denise Mina has been one of the leading lights in contemporary Scottish crime fiction, producing a string of consistently high-quality works featuring strong female characters and painting a vivid picture of the dark side of Glasgow.
In this, her 10th novel, Mina is at the top of her game and weaves together the various threads of the story with a contrapuntal skill that Bach would have been proud of.
The characters include a grandfather - a life-long communist and stalwart of the trade union movement - who's gunned down in the course of a robbery at a post office in Glasgow's West End.
There are police officers sailing close to the wind in their dealings with the local drugs lords and a misogynistic left-wing politician pressured by his wife to sue a tabloid newspaper for printing stories about his sex life that he knows to be true.
And there's DI Alex Morrow, recently returned to work after giving birth to twins, whose brother Danny is himself a shady character from Glasgow's underworld.
What the connection is between them I won't reveal but this gripping read makes Gods And Beasts perhaps Mina's strongest novel so far.
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