Customer Reviews

Garnethill: A Novel of Crime

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This was a wonderful book. It was, at turns, suspenseful, hilarious, gritty, thrilling, sad, witty, insightful and spooky. I stayed up late two evenings in a row to finish it and annoyed my traveling companion by continually reading funny or perceptive lines. It's hard to believe that this is the author's first book. I hope the author has a long and successful career ... and is prolific. I also hope the book (& author) become popular in the U.S. so future books are quickly and readily available.

Neither bleak nor a suburb, Garnethill is compact island of a neighbourhood in the centre of Glasgow, full of dauntingly steep hills à la Bullitt's best car chase scenes. It is certainly not among Glasgow's worst, but neither is it among its best. The book is bleak at times, yes, as befits the genre. And Glasgow, like many places, can be bleak, especially on short winter days with biting rain and wind. This story lives among the low-lifes and marginals of the city, and while those are not the only Glasgow - or urban - stories to tell, they are surely among the most compelling.

Comparing Scottish crime writers with Ian Rankin may be a cliché, but what he and Mina both do well is to root their stories in place, bringing alive the corners and cultures of the cities which are their settings. Mina's characters travel across most parts of the city, and she recreates cafés, pubs, streets and tenement closes with an accuracy that Glasgow readers should appreciate and in which they will recognise many minor landmarks far from the tourist trail and the trendy shops and bars. And the humour (the book is tremendously funny in places), banter and psyche are very Glaswegian, dark and ironic. The excellent sense of suspense at the heart of the book is bolstered by engaging - if sometimes disturbed - characters and an intricate recreation of their Glasgow.

Meet Maureen O'Donnell: member of a dysfunctional family, struggling to survive a history of abuse and to find her own way in the world. Maureen has a relationship with Douglas, a therapist, which she is about to end. When Douglas is found murdered in Maureen's flat, Maureen is a suspect. The investigation into the murder raises a number of issues from Maureen's past, and for a number of other people as well.

Who murdered Douglas and why? There seem to be plenty of people with sufficient motive, but who had the opportunity? This novel deals with the uncomfortable world of victims of sexual abuse and how they relate to a world which has already let them down. Given the setting, it is easy to understand how (and why) Maureen feels compelled to take control of the investigation herself where she can.

This novel won the 1998 John Creasy Memorial Award for best first crime novel. This will be an uncomfortable novel for some to read: Ms Mina has succeeded in creating characters whose experiences and responses to abuse are frighteningly realistic and common.

Highly recommended.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Have you ever read a book or seen a movie and wanted to immediately reread it or see it again? That was the feeling I got after completing Denis Mina's mystery novel, "Garnethill". It didn't matter that I now knew who committed the crime. I began to miss the characters and wanted to start at the beginning, so that I could experience meeting them once more.

In "Granethill", Mina created a real world peopled by a mentally troubled but loveable heroine, Maureen O'Donnell, and her dysfunctional family and friends along with a host of other solid and believable characters. The novel's setting is Granethill, a bleak Glasgow neighborhood where a grisly murder has taken place and where the only person who can solve the case is Maureen.

After a night of heavy drinking with her best friend Leslie, a social worker, Maureen decides to break up with her therapist boyfriend Douglas Brady who she recently discovered is married. Her mind made up, she arrives home extremely drunk and goes straight to bed. The next morning when she is returning from the bathroom, a blood soaked raincoat catches her eye, she looks away from it down the hall to her living room. There is Douglas, tied to one of her kitchen chairs with his throat slashed.

The police, led by Chief Inspector Joe McEwan, first set their sights on Maureen, but later change their focus to her brother Liam, who although a supportive and loving elder brother, just happens to be a drug dealer. It is up to Maureen to solve the case and take the police's attention away from Liam.

Bleak, who done it style mystery set in a seedy area of Glasgow with an unlikely heroine for the main character, an adult survivor of incest & family dysfunction. Maureen O'Donnell wakes up hungover one morning to discover her married ex-boyfriend tied to a chair in her living room, his throat has been cut and he has been viciously mutilated. At first, as an ex-mental patient she herself is the prime suspect, later turns into an amateur sleuth and eventually solves the case herself using her personal knowledge of the mental health world & her network of friends to assist her.

Some of the characters in this book are unforgettable, especially hard-drinking, cursing like a trooper Maureen, one of the more unique female main characters I've come across in awhile. Also her perpetually drunk mother, Winnie (no one ever mentions that Mother drinks), her brother Liam the drug dealer, the sisters - 2 total hypocrites in heavy denial, her family is hilarious, a comic tragedy.

While I enjoyed the book, I found a couple of things not credible and not explained. It was not clear to me why so many were quick to believe it was Maureen, when it would be difficult physically for many females to subdue a man & tie him to a chair. Also, I wish more time had been spent on the actual killer, it was such a surprise, what made him tick? I really look forward to reading the next book in this series, hope to see what happens to Maureen and her family in the future.

I adored this book. Still engrossed in it at 3 A.M. I made a pot of coffee so I could stay awake and keep reading it. I feel as if I have made some fine new friends in the characters, and that they, as friends do, have enriched my life and given me solid memories to laugh at or cry over. Most of all they make me feel that I am not alone in this world. Ms Mina's skill is comparable to that of the great John Harvey, but with an element of Scottish wit and raucous elan that calls to mind Alan Warner's 'The Sopranos'. The common element amongst the three expert authors is the ability to look the grimmest bits of life straight in the eye and to remain able to not only carry on but to retain the clarity of vision that knows beauty and good when they see it. All of the characterizations by all of these authors contain that elusive but essential element of complexity within a person that allows the reader to feel kinship towards the characters, and to feel genuine affection for the soul that created these beset but ennobled fictional human beings. To me, the true standard by which I judge a novel is, would I want to know the author in person, would I want to spend time in the same room with the characters? The answer for Garnethill is not only Yes Yes Yes but the book was so finely crafted that I feel as if I really have spent time with the characters and I miss them. The hero Maureen is superbly offset by her best pal Leslie, and both are people of the highest order. Leslie is like the paradigmatic best friend, she would earn a place in the greek pantheon as the goddess of best friendship. As with all fine works of literature, the plot here is incidental to the superbly rich craftmanship, but that can only occur when the plot is itself flawlessly expedited. It is a coherent whole of a book, and you are out of your mind if you don't buy it this instant, no kidding. I'm envious of those of you who have not yet read this wonderful book, because the experience was that good for me.

It seems to me that Denise Mina has that wondderful knack of delivering characters in a sentence. This book is thickly plotted, humerous and lives on in your heart and soul for much more than that. Its like Salinger or Chesterton for me, a throwaway line here and there make you ponder the meaning of your existence and the course of your life. Its a long time since I have been so deeply affected .

This was the best book I've read in a long time. I was disappointed when it was over and there was no more! I will look forward to other fiction by this author.

Some books, when you are not reading them, are missed. This story, with characters real and damaged by life and each other, is that kind of book. The author is gifted with the ability to flesh out her characters with a few well chosen words. The plot is good but it is secondary to the exploration of how we treat mental illness and those who've been traumatized by family betrayal. It makes you reconsider the stereotypes typically hung on the institutionalized. The main character is admirable despite her flaws,and she shouldn't show up as a crime solver ever again,please.

If you love the thrill of discovering a truly awesome new author (in ANY genre), you MUST read this book. If you love a writing talent that thrills you to chill-bumps, you MUST read this book. If you can bear the adrenalin-cold pit-of-the-stomach understanding of what incest survivors endure, you MUST read this book. If you want to be scared out-of-your-mind by one of the most horrifying alchoholic monster-mothers in history, you MUST read this book (no kidding, this woman gives Medea a run for the money). If you want an unforgettable look at raw life in Glasgow, you MUST read this book. On every level, this book deserved the editorial praise it garnered and the John Creasey Award. This isn't a Whodunit; it becomes pretty clear who the murderer must be, but the murders are almost tangential to the tale of Mauri, her life, her family, her friends. The story stays and stays and stays on in your head after you finish the book. The icy shiver of gut-truths runs through this author's prose - adding the element of curiosity to the great question - when does the next book come out?