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Amazon.co.uk Review
It is, of course, the stuff of nightmares. Maureen comes home late and drunk and wakes up next morning with a hangover, and her boyfriend in the next room with his throat cut, and something nasty in the cupboard under the stairs. The police are aware of her earlier mental breakdown, and it is only a touch of finesse too far on the part of whoever framed her that convinces them to look elsewhere. Maureen is not the conventional woman in danger of Gothic, though, and the effect of all of this is simply to annoy her; there are, it turns out, people on whom it is ill-advised to pick.
Denise Mina has learned many things from Chandler and one of them is to have a protagonist who is wonderfully and spectacularly rude to people who irritate her. A cast of tough Glasgow characters that includes her drug-dealer brother and the biker from the Women's Refuge help her sort out a mystery that turns, crucially, on the way society despises, and will never listen to, those who have been stigmatised as mentally ill. This is a thriller which combines the intellectual excitement of investigation with an underlying polemical anger; it is a remarkably finished debut. --Roz Kaveney --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
'Denise Mina has carved herself a niche as the queen of Glasgow noir and Garnethill is one of her best.' (CATHOLIC HERALD )
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I LOVE this book. the writing, characterisation & Glasgow burst off the pages & hit you right in the face. It made me dream of home. Why has Denise Mina not had the kind of high profile of other new young writers? She is far better than most.
Like all excellent writers of crime novels, she does not rely on over-egging violence, sex or co-incidence. Nor does she trot outthe the stale old stereo types who populate so much crime fiction today.
As an x-psychiatric nurse, she just plunged me right back in there....she will know exactly what I mean.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This story won an award for a debut crime novel, and I can well see why. Without wishing to suggest that it is `perfect' (whatever that is), I would say it is outstandingly accomplished and exceptionally readable.
I bought it on the strength of its title and absolutely nothing else. Garnethill is an area of Glasgow that I knew very well when I was young, and nostalgia is strong in Glasgow's émigré children. Apart from other factors, this city is full of unique and distinctive place-names, and I was looking longingly to hear them again. In fact the book has less of that than I expected, so I had to concentrate on the story. There is nothing distinctively concerned with Garnethill for one thing, but that makes a better title than, say, Springburn. One flank of Garnethill descends to Sauchiehall Street, the opposite flank to the Cowcaddens, but neither of these gets so much as a mention. If I had hoped to find some such statement as `A man was stabbed in the Gorbals' I did not find that either. The story is the thing, and quite a story it is too.
I liked basically everything about it. The dialogue and patois are distinctive enough to warm an exile's heart, but not so distinctive as to be unintelligible to anyone else. There are some very good lines here and there, most of them too indecorous for quotation in a review. It is all seedy stuff, what we used to call `kitchen sink' material back in the 50's. Being old enough to remember, say, Up The Junction, or A Kind of Loving, I started with a slight suspicion that we were meant to be shocked at such scenarios and goings-on, but happily that was just my own age showing and not the way the book is. In a sense it is pretty grim material, but for all the show of gritty unflinching realism the narrative has a sense of proportion, good taste and even a grimy dignity about it.
The characterisation is distinctly good in my opinion. I could recognise many or most of the types delineated, and there is a particular kind of brutality about Glasgow crime that came over to me very clearly, and that I hope will be recognisable to others lacking my own background, because the sense of it is captured with genuine perceptiveness and sensitivity. The real sleuthing is done by someone with rather an exceptional interest in finding the truth, miles ahead of the police in her thinking while not being any kind of genius, and a real down-to-earth personality rather than any specialist like Poirot or even Marlowe. The characters in this book are never boring or superfluous, but I'd say the best thing about the story is how well the narrative is paced. The identity of the killer emerges gradually and tantalisingly, known to the main participants before they mention it to the rest of us. What happens to the killer is then full of poetic justice and very satisfying, I thought, as well as highly original.
Not a page too long, it seemed to me as I waved farewell to them down Duke Street.
I bought it on the strength of its title and absolutely nothing else. Garnethill is an area of Glasgow that I knew very well when I was young, and nostalgia is strong in Glasgow's émigré children. Apart from other factors, this city is full of unique and distinctive place-names, and I was looking longingly to hear them again. In fact the book has less of that than I expected, so I had to concentrate on the story. There is nothing distinctively concerned with Garnethill for one thing, but that makes a better title than, say, Springburn. One flank of Garnethill descends to Sauchiehall Street, the opposite flank to the Cowcaddens, but neither of these gets so much as a mention. If I had hoped to find some such statement as `A man was stabbed in the Gorbals' I did not find that either. The story is the thing, and quite a story it is too.
I liked basically everything about it. The dialogue and patois are distinctive enough to warm an exile's heart, but not so distinctive as to be unintelligible to anyone else. There are some very good lines here and there, most of them too indecorous for quotation in a review. It is all seedy stuff, what we used to call `kitchen sink' material back in the 50's. Being old enough to remember, say, Up The Junction, or A Kind of Loving, I started with a slight suspicion that we were meant to be shocked at such scenarios and goings-on, but happily that was just my own age showing and not the way the book is. In a sense it is pretty grim material, but for all the show of gritty unflinching realism the narrative has a sense of proportion, good taste and even a grimy dignity about it.
The characterisation is distinctly good in my opinion. I could recognise many or most of the types delineated, and there is a particular kind of brutality about Glasgow crime that came over to me very clearly, and that I hope will be recognisable to others lacking my own background, because the sense of it is captured with genuine perceptiveness and sensitivity. The real sleuthing is done by someone with rather an exceptional interest in finding the truth, miles ahead of the police in her thinking while not being any kind of genius, and a real down-to-earth personality rather than any specialist like Poirot or even Marlowe. The characters in this book are never boring or superfluous, but I'd say the best thing about the story is how well the narrative is paced. The identity of the killer emerges gradually and tantalisingly, known to the main participants before they mention it to the rest of us. What happens to the killer is then full of poetic justice and very satisfying, I thought, as well as highly original.
Not a page too long, it seemed to me as I waved farewell to them down Duke Street.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
One of the best crime novels I've read in quite a while, this book takes the reader deep into the tough world of sexual abuse survivors in Glasgow. A year ago Maureen O'Donnell suffered a breakdown after repressed memories of her childhood sexual abuse came flooding back. Now, eight months out of Northern Psychiatric Hospital she holds a dull (albeit steady) job as a movie ticket seller and has been having a rather unsatisfactory affair with a married therapist. Resolving to dump him, she gets blotto drunk with her pal, stumbles home and passes out. Unfortunately, when she wakes up the next morning, her boyfriend is tied to a chair in the living room with his throat slit. The police naturally suspect her, or her drug dealer brother, of the murder, and lean heavily on both. Matters aren't helped by Maureen's alcoholic mother who's liable to say anything, and is in total denial (along with Maureen's two sisters) about Maureen's being abused by their father-who fled after Maureen's breakdown. With little support from that end of her family, Maureen and her brother bond together, along with her legal student friend Benny, and tough social worker Leslie.
Spurred by a small initial suspicion, Maureen starts digging into the murder herself, and finds out all kinds of things the police haven't. As she bounces between her dysfunctional family, threatening police, friends, and local psychiatric facilities, she starts uncovering more and more secrets, spurring the killer to take further action, upping the stakes. She's a realistically haphazard and inept amateur sleuth, but her familiarity with the mental health care system and it's people allow her access to areas the police can barely fathom. She's also an extremely compelling character, flawed in many ways, but with a slowly simmering desire to discard her vicitmhood and take action. She's not unlike Alan Warner's Scottish women in Morvern Callar or The Sopranos. All the supporting cast burst from the pages with life, and Mina has that rare talent of creating fictional characters you miss when the book is done. (Fortunately, you can tell that in setting up Maureen with a new man and a new job, she's laid the groundwork for a sequel, which is Exile.) Mina has written a gripping and expertly plotted account of how things can go badly wrong in mental healthcare, how little protection sexual abuse survivors have, but with an oddly empowering ending. The Glasgow of her book is not the out and out ghetto Scotland that one finds in some other Scottish fiction, but rather a tough, lower-class environment where people struggle to make a life for themselves despite the world around them. Similar in tone to John Harvey's Nottingham, John William's Cardiff, or George Pelecanos's Washington, DC.
By the way, the CD that is mentioned several times is by the '80s British ska revival band "The Selecter" not "Selector." I'm not sure why Mina chose to change the name, but with Pauline Black at the vocals, The Selecter still make for great listening. One last note, Maureen orders one of the nastiest sounding drinks, I've ever heard of: half whiskey, half lime cordial...
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
lot of pluses, but didn't resonate with me
I had mixed feelings about Garnethill. Mina is clearly a skilled writer and the story is well plotted, with some nice twists and tension points, and is particularly strong on... Read more
Published 22 days ago by Rob Kitchin
"What was in the cupboard?"
Robust action and strong motivations are a feature of this excellent crime novel. If you are easily made nauseous then you might have a problem with some of the violence. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Eileen Shaw
Wit Helps This Burning Taste of Scottish Life Go Down
"Garnethill," upon its 1998 publication, immediately put its author, Scottish-born Denise Mina, on the map: as well it might, since it was given the John Creasey Award for Best... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Stephanie DePue
I love this trilogy
I love love love this trilogy, for the freshness of the writing and the characterisation, and the setting. Read more
Published on 27 May 2010 by Happyface
Rich reading
I loved this book for its rich tapestry of characters and the vivid descriptions of the situations Maureen found herself in. Read more
Published on 26 April 2010 by Birkmyre
Disheartened
I'm disheartened by the positive reviews this violent, silly book has won. Denise Mina cannot, I repeat cannot, write. Her prose style is lazy. Read more
Published on 14 Mar 2010 by Lee Holton
Decent light read
I quite liked this book as a holiday read. There was no real mystery in it but Mina does write believable characters. Read more
Published on 18 Aug 2008 by Robert
An excellent read!
I am completely sold on the work of Denise Mina- in her novels she creates the kind of woman who could drink Rebus under the table- read this and you will want more- I guarantee... Read more
Published on 29 Feb 2008 by Thriller seeker!
Garnethill
Far more effective as a drama rather than a crime novel. The mystery aspect I felt was less successful causing the pace to flag towards the end. Read more
Published on 12 May 2006 by Rich
Excellent debut novel
The quality of the writing in this book is generally excellent. The author describes the seedier side of Glasgow with great skill, and she's not afraid to tackle some really... Read more
Published on 12 Feb 2002
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