Showing results by author "Denise Mina" in All Categories

An acclaimed novelist, playwright and comic book writer, Denise Mina has won numerous awards, including the CWA John Creasy Dagger for Best First Crime Novel and the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year Award (twice). Her 'Paddy Meehan' series has been adapted for BBC TV, and she has presented numerous television and radio programmes. Included here are six of her stories, as heard on BBC Radio, plus a bonus biographical programme.

When Margo goes in search of her birth mother for the first time, she meets her aunt Nikki instead. Margo learns that her mother, Susan, was a sex worker murdered soon after Margo's adoption. To this day, Susan's killer has never been found. Nikki asks Margo for help. She has received threatening and haunting letters from the murderer for decades. She is determined to find him, but she can't do it alone.... A brilliant, thought-provoking and heart-wrenching new thriller about identity and the value of a life.

Maureen O'Donnell is a psychiatric patient, stuck in an affair with Douglas, a shady therapist. She’s about to end it with him when she wakes up one morning to find him in her living room with his throat slit. Viewed by the police as both a suspect and a witness, even Maureen’s family suspects her. Panic-stricken, she retraces Douglas' last days, finding a trail of rape and deception at a psychiatric hospital where she’d been an inmate. The patients won't talk and staff are afraid. Then a second brutalised corpse is discovered and Maureen realises that her life is in danger.

A Glasgow post office. Martin Pavel cowers on the floor, his eyes locked on those of a terrified child. Above them a masked gunman wields an AK-47 while the boy’s grandfather calmly volunteers to help gather the money. Then the old man stands passively, hands by his sides, while the gunman raises the barrel and shoots him to shreds. Recently returned to work after the birth of her twins, DS Alex Morrow is called in to head the investigation.

It’s just a normal morning for Anna McDonald. Gym kits, packed lunches, getting everyone up and ready. Until she opens the front door to her best friend, Estelle. Anna turns to see her own husband at the top of the stairs, suitcase in hand. They’re leaving together and they’re taking Anna’s two daughters with them. Left alone in the big, dark house, Anna can’t think, she can’t take it in. With her safe, predictable world shattered, she distracts herself with a story: a true-crime podcast.

Paddy Meehan is trawling the city for a story that will get her off the terrible night shift to which she's been consigned by her male colleagues. And then a woman, bleeding from a vicious head wound, offers her £50 to leave her alone. The very next morning the woman is found dead. Only Paddy cares enough about what's really happened to pursue a dark and brutal truth that could make her career, or kill her.

William Watt wants answers about his family's murder. Peter Manuel has them. But Peter Manuel is a liar. William Watt is an ordinary businessman, a fool, a social climber. Peter Manuel is a famous liar, a rapist, a criminal. He claims he can get hold of the gun used to murder Watt's family. One December night in 1957, Watt meets Manuel in a Glasgow bar to find out what he knows.

Paddy Meehan has just started work on the Scottish Daily News when a toddler is abducted. Two eleven-year-old boys are arrested for his murder and Paddy is shocked to discover that one of them is her fiance's cousin, Callum. When the boy's name is reported in the media, Paddy's family believe that she is to blame. Shunned by those closest to her, she finds herself dangerously alone.

Anna and Finn investigate a young girl's disappearance which seems to be connected to an art heist years ago. Beginning in a tumble-down chateau in rural France and taking the listener on a thrilling chase across Europe, Confidence is another stellar novel from one of crime writing's most accomplished authors.

It's Saturday evening, 9th March 1566, and Mary, Queen of Scots, is six months pregnant. She's hosting a supper party. Outside, Edinburgh is bustling. It’s full of the great and the good and the idiot sons of the rich, here for a Parliament that will take Scotland by the shoulders and turn it from England to face Europe. Mary doesn't know that her palace is surrounded - that, right now, an army of men is creeping upstairs to her chamber. They're coming to murder David Rizzio, her friend and secretary, the handsome Italian man who is smiling across the table at her.

Glasgow, 1990. Paddy Meehan's relaxed Saturday in front of the TV is shattered when the police knock on her door. Terry Patterson has been found naked in a ditch, executed with a shot through his temple. He was her first love and her hero - the sort of journalist she'd always aspired to be.

When Dr Susie Harriot is convicted of the brutal murder of Andrew Gow, a serial killer in her care, it looks certain that she will be given a life sentence, depriving her of her home, family and two-year-old daughter. Susie's husband, Lachlan, is convinced his wife is innocent, and is determined to find evidence to support an appeal. Every night he sits in Susie's study and goes through her papers – her case notes, her interviews with Gow, and the press cuttings from the trial.

When notorious millionaire banker Lars Anderson hangs himself from the old oak tree in front of his Kent mansion his death attracts no sympathy. But the legacy of a lifetime of self-serving is widespread, the carnage most acute amongst those he ought to be protecting: his family. Meanwhile, in a wealthy suburb of Glasgow, a young woman is found savagely murdered in her home. The genteel community is stunned by what appears a vicious, random attack.

It’s the case that could make DS Alex Morrow’s career. A suburban home invaded in the dead of night and a vulnerable old man taken hostage. It’s a black and white case and it shouldn’t be hard to solve… The two strangers who forced their way into the house demanded millions the family didn’t have and shouted for a man nobody had heard of. It had to be a mistake, and a bad one at that. But Alex Morrow can’t be depended on and the bosses know it.

The last time Maureen O'Donnell saw Ann Harris, she was nursing a couple of broken ribs and reeking of alcohol at the women's shelter. Now Ann has turned up dead hundreds of miles away, in London. Eager to escape some family difficulties of her own, Maureen travels to London to determine the circumstances of Ann's brutal death. In the seedy underworld of criminal exiles and dangerous drug lords, Maureen tries to piece together the horror of Ann's last days - and to save herself from a similarly ugly fate.

Maureen O'Donnell is facing the darkest episode in her life. She owes more than she makes in a year in back taxes; Angus Farrell, the psychologist who murdered her boyfriend, is up for trial; and her abusive father has arrived back in Glasgow. On top of it all, she has become embroiled in someone else's family feud. Ella McGee, an elderly stallholder at the fleamarket where Maureen is selling illegally imported cigarettes, is bringing a case against her son in the small claims court.

It's mid-September, a heatwave has descended on the parched hills of LA, and Private Detective Philip Marlowe is called to the Montgomery estate, an almost mythic place sitting high on top of Beverly Hills. Wealthy twenty-two-year-old Chrissie Montgomery, set to inherit an enormous fortune, is missing. She's a walking target, ripe for someone to get their claws into. Her dying father, along with his sultry bottle blonde girlfriend, wants her found before that happens. They've hired Anna Riorden, Marlowe's nemesis, too. The search takes them to the roughest neighbourhoods of LA.

Desire leaves a man destroyed.... A young girl's curiosity reveals secrets better left hidden.... An accidental encounter on a train ends violently.... Ambition leads to a curious exchange.... An uncanny likeness changes two lives forever.... Here is a novel in 16 chilling parts, linked by a glittering charm bracelet that brings misfortune to everyone who handles it. In Like a Charm, the cream of British and American crime writers combine for a must-have collection.

Klidný nedělní večer na předměstí Glasgow. Běží televize, v troubě se peče večeře. Klid naruší stará otlučená dodávka, která prorazí dveře jednoho ospalého domu. Vyřítí se z ní skupina ozbrojených mužů v kuklách. Zajmou rodinu a požadují výkupné milion liber. Útočníci jednoho člena rodiny unesou. Na místo je přivolána vyšetřovatelka Alex Morrowová. Ale kolem případu se objevuje spousta záhad. Kdo byli ti únosci? Proč si mysleli, že v normálním domě žije bohatá rodina? Rodina zarytě mlčí.

31st August 1997. Rose Wilson is 14, but looks 16. Pimped out by her ‘boyfriend’, she has seen more of the darkness in life than someone twice her age. On the night of Princess Diana's death, Rose snaps and commits two terrible crimes. But a defence lawyer takes pity and sets out to do what he can to save her. Present day. DI Alex Morrow is a witness in the case of Michael Brown – a vicious, nasty arms dealer.