Denise Mina - Paddy Meehan & Garnethill series
Paddy Meehan:
Paddy Meehan discovers that one of the boys charged with the murder of toddler Brian Wilcox is her fiance Sean's cousin, Callum. Soon Callum's name is all over the news, and her family believe she is to blame. Shunned by Sean and by those closest to her, Paddy finds herself dangerously alone.
02.The Dead Hour
Paddy Meehan, Glasgow's aspiring journalist is back on the beat, trawling the streets of Glasgow for a story — something to prove she can write; that she's better at her job than all her male colleagues; anything that will get her off the terrible night shift that is slowly turning her brains to mush. And then she meets the woman with the poodle perm at the door of a wealthy suburb in the north of the city. It's just a domestic dispute, Paddy's told, although her instincts are alerted when she's slipped a £50 note to keep the story out of the papers. By the next morning the woman is dead; she's been tortured, beaten, and left to die. Paddy has found her story, but she's still got the £50; and with her father and brothers unemployed, and her upright Roman Catholic family perilously short of money, this could solve a lot of problems.
A day later, Paddy sees a body being pulled from the river. Another death, she's told; it's nothing to do with you; go home. But when Paddy talks to the wife of the dead man, she finds that the relationship between him and the murdered woman was closer than the police had imagined. Why have these people died? What were they trying to hide? And could this be the break Paddy's been waiting for? What follows is a deeply personal journey into the dark heart of a brutal economic recession, and the brutal bud of the drugs trade in the 1980s.
03.Slip of the Knife
Paddy Meehan is home alone when there's a knock at the door. It's the police and they have bad news. Former boyfriend Terry Patterson's naked body has been found in a ditch. He's been tortured, hooded, then shot through the head: all hallmarks of an IRA assassination.
Paddy is devastated: Terry was her first lover; the sort of journalist she's always aspired to be. But why have the police come to her? Although she and Terry have had an on/off affair since they first worked together, she hasn't seen him for over a year.
She is therefore horrified to find that not only has Terry named her next of kin, but he has left her a huge Georgian house in Ayrshire and several suitcases full of notes.
What was Terry trying to tell her? As Paddy begins her investigation into his death, she realizes that if the secret he was about to expose was worth killing for, she is next in line.
Garnethill:
01.Garnethill
Maureen O'Donnell wasn't born lucky. A psychiatric patient and survivor of sexual abuse, she's stuck in a dead-end job and a secretive relationship with Douglas, a shady therapist. Her few comforts are making up stories to tell her psychiatrist, the company of friends, and the sweet balm of whisky. She is about to end her affair with Douglas when she wakes up one morning to find him in her living room with his throat slit.
Viewed in turn by the police as a suspect and as an uncooperative, unstable witness, Maureen is even suspected by her alcoholic mother and self-serving sisters of being involved. Worse than that, the police won't tell her anything about Douglas's death.
Panic-stricken and feeling betrayed by friends and family, Maureen begins to doubt her own version of events. She retraces Douglas's desperate last days and picks up a horrifying trail of ****, deception...and suppressed scandal at a local psychiatric hospital where she had been an inmate. But the patients won't talk and the staff are afraid, and when a second brutalized corpse is discovered, Maureen realises that unless she gets to the killer first, her life is in danger.
02.Exile
The last time Maureen O'Donnell saw Ann Harris, she was in the Glasgow Women's Shelter smelling of a long binge on cheap drink. A month later Ann's mutilated body, stitched into a mattress, is washed up on the banks of the Thames. No-one, except for Maureen and her best mate, Leslie, seems to care about what has happened to her, and Maureen is the only person who thinks Ann's husband is innocent.
But solving Ann's murder comes as light relief. Maureen's father is back in Glasgow, Leslie is sloping about like a nervous spy, and then there's Angus, Maureen's old therapist, who's twice as bright as she is and making her play a dangerous game with the police.
In the long tradition of Scots in trouble, Maureen runs away to London. Looking for answers to the mystery surrounding Ann's death, she becomes embroiled in a seedy world of deceit and violence. Alone in a strange city, Maureen starts to piece together Ann's final days. But time is not on her side, and Maureen needs just twelve hours, just twelve, to put things right, and she doesn't care what it costs
But solving Ann's murder comes as light relief. Maureen's father is back in Glasgow, Leslie is sloping about like a nervous spy, and then there's Angus, Maureen's old therapist, who's twice as bright as she is and making her play a dangerous game with the police.
In the long tradition of Scots in trouble, Maureen runs away to London. Looking for answers to the mystery surrounding Ann's death, she becomes embroiled in a seedy world of deceit and violence. Alone in a strange city, Maureen starts to piece together Ann's final days. But time is not on her side, and Maureen needs just twelve hours, just twelve, to put things right, and she doesn't care what it costs
03.Resolution
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, with Maureen as the reluctant star witness; and her abuser has arrived back in Glasgow in time for the birth of her sister's baby. On top of it all, Maureen - who identifies all too readily with the underdogs of this world - has become embroiled in someone else's family feud.
When an elderly stallholder at the flea market where Maureen and Leslie are selling illegally imported cigarettes dies in hospital after a brutal beating, Maureen questions why anyone might want to kill the woman popularly known as 'Home Gran'. She suspects Ella's son, but Si McGee is an upstanding member of the Scottish business community, runs a chain of estate agents and has a health club in Glasgow's West End. But she soon discovers that the 'health club' fronts a much less respectable establishment. As Angus's trial approaches, once again Maureen is under threat, and this time she has very few protectors
When an elderly stallholder at the flea market where Maureen and Leslie are selling illegally imported cigarettes dies in hospital after a brutal beating, Maureen questions why anyone might want to kill the woman popularly known as 'Home Gran'. She suspects Ella's son, but Si McGee is an upstanding member of the Scottish business community, runs a chain of estate agents and has a health club in Glasgow's West End. But she soon discovers that the 'health club' fronts a much less respectable establishment. As Angus's trial approaches, once again Maureen is under threat, and this time she has very few protectors
Novel
Still Midnight
Still Midnight
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?
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