About this item
A breathtaking thriller about a wealthy housewife who successfully conceals her dark past until a true-crime podcast and a photo posted on social media send her running across Europe, with a faded rock star by her side and extremely dangerous enemies on her trail.Anna McLean loves to revel in life's unsavory details. When she's keeping up appearances as an upper-class Edinburgh housewife, there's no better escape than other people's sordid stories retold in true-crime podcasts. Until the day it all falls apart. A new podcast turns out to have a connection to Anna's own dark past--the secret history she's taken great pains to conceal. Hours later, her husband announces he's leaving her--for her own best friend. And when the best friend's husband--who happens to be former rock star Fin Cohen--shows up on Anna's front stoop, a nosy neighbor plasters their photo all over the internet. Her cover well and truly blown, Anna's only choice is to run--and take Fin along for his own protection.Reigning queen of Scottish crime fiction Denise Mina deftly weaves the classic thriller elements of a woman with a secret past, an average citizen thrust into a high-stakes international chase, and a cheating spouse, with online life--internet sleuthing, true-crime podcasts, insta-celebrities, and Twitter--to craft a modern, propulsive page-turner like nothing you've read before.
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.
