Blending suspense, compassion, raw instinct, and grim wit, Denise Mina’s Resolution completes her compelling Garnethill trilogy (which includes two New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year) that Val McDermid, author of A Place of Execution, calls “head and shoulders above much of contemporary crime fiction.” In her gripping new crime novel, Mina returns once more to the seamier precincts of Glasgow and the untidy world of the hapless but resolute Maureen O’Donnell. Maureen’s abusive father has shown up again in Glasgow; and Angus Farrell, the psychologist who so gruesomely murdered her therapist-boyfriend, is going on trial—with Maureen as the star witness. Meanwhile, she’s embroiled in another hard-bitten family’s feud when Ella McGee, an elderly stallholder at the flea market where Maureen sells illegally imported cigarettes, decides to take her son to small-claims court over unpaid wages and then turns up beaten brutally in Albert Hospital. Violence hovers in the most familiar precincts of Maureen’s Garnethill, and Denise Mina once again proves herself to be an award-winning writer.
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.
