The book got a good reception from the critics and its first hardback edition quickly sold out it has been serialised on radio and optioned for TV. Garnethill - the title refers to a district in central Glasgow - is Denise Mina’s first full-length novel, written while she was also doing research for her PhD on women, mental illness and the justice system. It is Maureen’s understanding that sexual abuse is real which leads her to the truth, and inspires her to fight back. Most members of her family regard her as still ‘mental’ and deny that the abuse ever happened.
Viewed by the police as an obvious suspect, Maureen must turn detective and find out who really killed him.īut this detective has a particular history, unusual in fiction if not in fact: she’s a survivor of sexual abuse by her father, and of the mental health system to which the effects of his abuse consigned her.
This article originally appeared in T&S Issue 38, Winter 1998/99.Īt first glance, Denise Mina’s novel Garnethill follows a classic detective story formula: an ordinary woman, Maureen O’Donnell, wakes up with a hangover one morning to find, in her living room, the murdered body of the boyfriend she was just about to finish with.
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