Field of Blood: A Novel [Hardcover]

Denise Mina (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 11, 2005

A sensational murder provides the young journalist Paddy Meehan with her big professional break when she realizes that she has a personal connection to one of the suspects.Launching her own investigation, Paddy uncovers lines of deception that go deep into the past - and that could spell even more horrible crimes in the future if she doesn't get the story right.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. If this novel were a movie, filmgoers would tag it the one to beat for the Oscars. Beyond creating sweaty physical tension, the brilliant Mina may have invented a subgenre: moral suspense. Patricia "Paddy" Meehan, a copygirl at Glasgow's Daily News, has struggled with issues of goodness since childhood. "I knew I was lying when I made my first communion," she confesses to fiancé Sean Ogilvy the night she delivers other shockers. She won't marry him. And she wants his help interviewing his 10-year-old cousin, Callum, who's been charged with murdering a toddler. Scots are deemed legally responsible at eight, but Paddy sees Callum as another victim. Paddy, who shares a nickname with a career criminal wrongfully imprisoned for murder, can't tolerate injustice. At the heart of the plot is her decision pose as colleague Heather Allen when she makes dangerous inquiries, a choice that spells death for the real Heather, who's everything Paddy isn't: slim blonde whistle bait—and ambitious enough to steal a story from Paddy. After Heather's murder, the reader writhes, not just because Paddy's in danger but because a moment of awful truth awaits her. Mina spins the complexities in the rough music of her working-class Scots, unsparing of brutal details, but unfailingly elegant in her humanity.
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From Booklist

Scottish hard-boiled writers like Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, and Denise Mina are the literary equivalents of post-Calvin church architecture: spiky, gray, grim. In her Glasgow novels, Mina, especially, finds the emotional equivalent of what her characters endure and what some inflict on others in the unrelievedly bleak tenements and back ways of the wrong side of town. She introduces a new heroine here, a young woman, Paddy Meehan, who works as a gofer at a Glasgow daily in 1981. The story centers on the horrific killing of a little boy by two other boys. Paddy gets drawn into the case through her recognition that one of the boys charged is related to her fiance. Although the connection and Paddy's involvement are a bit of a stretch, the novel offers a fascinating look at sexism and newspaper politics--and a reminder of how tough it is to be poor and ambitious. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (July 11, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316735930
• ISBN-13: 978-0316735933
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.2 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #228,096 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Denise Mina was born in Glasgow in 1966. Because of her father's job as an engineer, the family followed the north sea oil boom of the seventies around Europe, moving twenty one times in eighteen years from Paris to the Hague, London, Scotland and Bergen. She left school at sixteen and did a number of poorly paid jobs: working in a meat factory, bar maid, kitchen porter and cook. Eventually she settle in auxiliary nursing for geriatric and terminal care patients.
At twenty one she passed exams, got into study Law at Glasgow University and went on to research a PhD thesis at Strathclyde University on the ascription of mental illness to female offenders, teaching criminology and criminal law in the mean time.
Misusing her grant she stayed at home and wrote a novel, 'Garnethill' when she was supposed to be studying instead.
'Garnethill' won the Crime Writers' Association John Creasy Dagger for the best first crime novel and was the start of a trilogy completed by 'Exile' and 'Resolution'.
A fourth novel followed, a stand alone, named 'Sanctum' in the UK and 'Deception' in the US.

In 2005 'The Field of Blood' was published, the first of a series of five books following the career and life of journalist Paddy Meehan from the newsrooms of the early 1980s, through the momentous events of the nineteen nineties. The second in the series was published in 2006, 'The Dead Hour' and the third will follow in 2007.
She also writes comics and wrote 'Hellblazer', the John Constantine series for Vertigo, for a year, published soon as graphic novels called 'Empathy is the Enemy' and 'The Red Right Hand'. She has also written a one-off graphic novel about spree killing and property prices called 'A Sickness in the Family' (DC Comics forthcoming).
In 2006 she wrote her first play, "Ida Tamson" an adaptation of a short story which was serialised in the Evening Times over five nights. The play was part of the Oran Mor 'A Play, a Pie and a Pint' series, starred Elaine C. Smith and was, frankly, rather super.
As well as all of this she writes short stories published various collections, stories for BBC Radio 4, contributes to TV and radio as a big red face at the corner of the sofa who interjects occasionally, is writing a film adaptation of Ida Tamson and has a number of other projects on the go.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars not what I expected, but I enjoyed it anyway, August 10, 2005

By 

tregatt (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Field of Blood: A Novel (Hardcover)

Over the past few years, Denise Mina has earned herself the reputation of being one of the best suspense writers currently published. With "The Field of Blood" she's done something very different from her previous books, and something slightly more ambitious. So that while "The Field of Blood" may not be her best mystery offering, ("GarnetHill" was definitely the best one so far) -- mainly because this is not a very suspenseful read --it was a very absorbing and emotionally charged read, and one that gave readers not completely familiar with the social history of Scotland in the '60s, '70s & and the '80s, an idea of the prejudices that somone from a poor, working-class Irish-Catholic background would have experienced in Scotland during that period.

Young "Paddy" Meehan longs for the day when she will be a real journalist, writing articles and being taken seriously by the male journalists she works with, feeling quite dismal about her current status as a glorified gofer for the Scottish Daily News. But she never expected that it would take the brutal murder of a child, and the ostracism of her family and her fiance, Sean, in order for her dreams to be realised. For when the body of Brian Wilcox is found, and two other children are arrested for the murder, Paddy realises that one of the suspects is Sean's young cousin. Unwittingly, Paddy confides in the wrong person, and the story is splashed all over the news. Her family and Sean are furious with her, but that's the least of Paddy's problems. For Paddy refuses to believe that the two boys were solely responsible for Brian's death, and begins to do some investigative work on her own, and in doing so makes a very dangerous and determined person very, very nervous...

I enjoyed "Field of Blood" immensely, though it probably will not be everyone's cup of tea. The subject matter is shocking and brutal, even with Denise Mina's restrained handling of the subject matter. The violence and brutality of the crime is, thankfully, never explicit or sensationalised. Could this be one reason why the book is not as suspenseful as other novels dealing with the murder of children? I'm not sure, and I would like to think not. The truth of the matter though is that "Field of Blood" is not so much about the investigation into the murder of Brian Wilcox, so much as it is an examination of Paddy's life, her identity and her ambitions and her sense of right and wrong. From that point of view, "Field of Blood" is a standout read. Paddy is the kind of protagonist that most will readily take to and find engaging. So that for me, it didn't matter that about two-thirds of the book was not very suspenseful or edge-of-your-seat gripping. It still was an engrossing and absorbing read. And if I had one criticism about this book, it was that I thought that the entire subplot dealing with the other Paddy Meehan, the safecracker who was found guilty of a high profile murder case, detracted from the smooth flow of the book. How this fitted into "The Field of Blood" was a bit of a mystery to me, and I really do think that the book would have been a much better one without it.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great stuff...., November 22, 2006

By 

Michael H. Jones (Carmel Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Field of Blood : A Novel (Hardcover)

I own a country store and am a serious book junkie. I put all my stuff on the shelves, free for the taking, and encourage others to do the same. I just happened upon this book in this fashion, a dog-eared paperback left by a stranger.

For reference I am a Michael Connoly, Robert Crais, James Lee Burke sort of a person. Denise Mina is right up there with the best of them.

I always feel like apologizing for the time I give up to mysteries...but I have to say that I love the writing, the characters, the insights these authors bring to the table....it is not just plot and action.

Denise Mina writes about Glasgow. Her heroine is an Irish Catholic girl from a working class family....not an upwardly mobile LA male. Her heroine is quiet, self deprecating, subtle...and so is the writing. This was something completely different.....but I loved the characters, the insights, the writing.....Enough to drop everything and go out to Borders and buy the hardback of her new book.

Highly recommended.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First in the Paddy Meehan series, January 8, 2007

By 

bumuling (GA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Field of Blood : A Novel (Hardcover)

This is a satisfying, well-written, dark and violent example of "tartan noir," beginning with a child's murder (based on the 1993 James Bulger case).

Paddy Meehan is overweight and insecure but deeply ambitious and verbally holds her own with the men at the newspaper where she works as a gofer. Paddy is perfectly willing to lie, break the law-- or shove a rival's head in a toilet-- as a means to a just end, or to jumpstart her career.

Paddy is shunned by her family, ridiculed by the police, rejected sexually by her staid Catholic boyfriend, and inadvertently causes one gruesome death while investigating another. She grows up a bit in the course of the novel; her desire for justice and her natural talent for journalism make her sympathetic in spite of her continual bad judgment.

This is a terrific read but a graphic and dark one.