Denise Mina and Scottish Crime Fiction

My thoughts have turned to Bloody Scotland, because I’ve persuaded my child that their graduation trip this fall should include a crime fiction festival, even though it is not their preferred genre. We’ll spend time in Edinburgh, which we visited nearly a decade ago, before going on to Stirling.

But I’m pondering whether we need to include Glasgow in advance of heading up to the Highlands, as we are stopping at Loch Ness and some castles. Glasgow is the grittier city where Denise Mina was born and raised, and where she sets her fiction. I’m using a Guardian list of Scottish crime fiction novels to help me decide part of our itinerary. Mina is singled out for praise here, and she’s deserving of it.

I’ve sampled three of her series, and the Garnethill novels are especially dark. They feature Maureen O’Donnell, a former psychiatric patient and survivor of child sexual abuse. She solves crimes because she, or people close to her, are implicated in murder investigations.

In the first novel Maureen finds her therapist, with whom she’s been having a sexual relationship, dead in her living room. Of course, she is the prime suspect. In the second book she’s working to support other women who have experienced abuse, while dealing with her family’s complex dynamics, as they continue to dispute her own account of her childhood. Two was enough for me. The other series by Mina that I’ve sampled are only slightly less grim, but I really liked Conviction, in particular.

Mina gives just about the best interview in the crime fiction business. Two examples will suffice, the first from a podcast:

“I was doing a PhD in Law and Psychiatry and I’d always fantasised about being a writer. I decided that I should give it a proper shot, then if I failed, I could just get on with my life. So, I did–and now I’m a writer!

The kind of law I was studying was dry and boring and that made writing fiction feel like a treat. If I got stuck, I could just make it up. I’m lucky to have a job where the desk is what I enjoy–most of your working life is padding around in pyjamas, which is brilliant.”

And from a New York Times profile:

“You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

Three Patricia Highsmiths and a fire extinguisher.

The older I get the less I enjoy dinner parties. It’s a stiff kind of theater, the gathering, the exclamations of delight over the food, the relentless self-presentation: ‘i’M a wRitEr, aCtuaLly!’ In fairness, I have been to a lot of them and may have blown out my taste buds with cigarettes. It feels like I’m eating dust for three hours while wearing tight pants.

In Andrew Wilson’s wonderful biography of Highsmith there’s a story about her girlfriend trying to introduce a socially isolated Highsmith to a group of interesting new friends over a dinner. During a conversational lull Highsmith stood up, leaned forward to a candle and set fire to her own hair to get out of it.

She didn’t much like them either.”

Edinburgh is Ian Rankin and Rebus, the Castle and Holyroodhouse, Arthur’s Seat and the Scott Monument.

But Glasgow . . . for me, it’s mostly Denise Mina, in recent years.

I have a History. In 1993, I was due to spend a year at the University of Glasgow as an exchange student. I arrived, via seeing friends in London and Oxford, a few days before my international student orientation. Then I discovered that the residence had no record of me checking in that day. They had misread my terrible printing (fair) and scheduled me for six days later, and they were completely full. They’d sent away my friend Jennifer, who’d arrived to greet me after visiting family in St. Kilda.

This would have been merely irksome, but on my student budget, it was impossible to find alternate accommodations in what was still high season. Pre-cellular phones, all arrangements had to be made by dumping pound coins into a phone box. The residence authorities finally relented and allowed me to stay one night, to sort myself and get medical attention for a painful kidney infection.

Except that my medical benefits also hadn’t kicked in. The NHS wouldn’t cover me until term officially started. Because I was more easily discouraged in those days, I called my college at U of T and spoke to the registrar. Glenn Loney had seen me through many a scrape, and the college was always generous to students. Yes, I could begin my classes three weeks late in Toronto, and transfer my scholarship and tuition from Glasgow. Not a problem.

I booked a flight and headed home–ignominiously spread across a whole row of seats, moaning, on an Air Canada flight–only to discover upon landing that my kidney issues were rather more severe. Procedures were required. It was probably a good thing I’d headed back to Toronto, but it was chastening. My mother could not refrain from pointing out that none of her well-travelled friends understood why I’d wanted to spend a year in Glasgow. She felt the enterprise had been doomed from the start.

Decades later, determined to actually see Glasgow, we travelled there for a few days en route to France. It was very, very grey. Our B & B was in a dodgy neighbourhood. Lots of signs in pubs warned to avoid discussing football or religion. We had some bad food. But we met up with a friend who was teaching there, and that was lovely. Twenty years down the line, I’ve been assured that the city is noticeably different, so maybe Glasgow? Mainly to trace the footsteps of Mina’s characters, I confess.

Other fabulous crime fiction set in Glasgow:

Louise Welsh’s chilling The Cutting Room

William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw (in my TBR pile) and The Dark Remains (ditto)

Karen Campbell’s The Twilight Time, though it was too violent for me

Val McDermid’s 1979, and more about that soon, because I’m finishing a post on everything McDermid. For now, her fun whisky story that’s free online.