Latest news with #DeniseMina
Scotsman
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
The Good Liar, by Denise Mina review: 'taut and cunning'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Amphibology. It's a smart word for a simple concept, the syntactic or lexical wriggle-room that generates double meanings. Examples might be the scene in Carnivale where the freakshow drums up interest in 'man eating chicken' or the reviewer's standby, 'I shall lose no time in reading your book'. As titles, the crime genre has an especial fondness for them, but I think this is the first of Denise Mina's to use the device. Does the title mean 'an individual exceptionally adept at fibbing' or 'a morally upright person with an unfortunate propensity for deception'? The trick is to keep a gap as to both meanings, and to which of the characters the title refers. Although this is technically a crime novel, it is notable that the press release calls it a suspense novel. While that is apposite, moral calculus novel works well too. Denise Mina | Lisa Ferguson / The Scotsman The central character is Dr Claudia O'Sheil, a scientist and forensic specialist whose modelling, particularly of blood splatters, has earned her a lucrative position with a data and testing company, ForSci Ltd. If her professional star is in the ascendant, however, her personal life is not: her husband, an investigative reporter, has died, and she is gnawed by suspicions it may have been suicide. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad She is called away from a glitzy opening ceremony with her friend, Sir Philip Ardmore, the owner and founder of ForSci Ltd, about to be elevated to chair of the Forensic Ethics Committee. Someone has stabbed to death Ardmore's schoolfriend Viscount 'Jonty' Stewart, as well as slicing his younger, second wife Francesca's throat and blowing the head off the guard dog. So, plenty for a blood splatter expert to do. The Viscount was at odds with his druggie son, William, and whoever committed the crime loathed Jonty so much his groin and genitals have been mutilated post-mortem. William, however, appears to have an alibi. Although this is the initial positioning of the pieces, it is framed by a narrative one year in the future, with Shiel, now an MBE, about to give a speech at the newly refurbished Royal College of Forensic Scientists, organised by Philip, now Lord, Ardmore. She does not intend to give the speech they think she is to give, and in fact is steeling herself to scupper her whole career by confessing to errors in her methodology. Mina strategically places a reference to Shaken Baby Syndrome, which came under scrutiny from the outset. But without going into details, any reader can do the rough maths. Even a 99.9% accuracy rate means a possible one in a thousand errors. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Crime fiction may have moved on from the classic whodunnit formula, but in doing so it has found different challenges. DNA evidence is far less novelistic than deduction and hunches. AI is much quicker at checking databases than a grizzled detective and a musty filing cabinet. Part of what makes Mina such an interesting writer is that the science is a background to the moral and ethical questions she is posing, not an end in itself, as it might be in the increasingly strained versions of Patricia Cornwell or Kathy Reichs. The double narrative provides two strands of jeopardy and tension. William is conspicuously unsplattered, even if doubts creep in about his alibi. O'Sheil is convinced of his innocence and perturbed that he pleads guilty nonetheless. If not him, who? Complications arise about the reliability of her statistics alongside concerns about the actual ownership of the company, which might tie in with her husband's death. Part of what is so convincing and troubling in this is the subtle unravelling of multiple affiliations of class and aristocratic loyalties. The other is the countdown to O'Sheil's revelation, and this is done very adroitly: I genuinely was unsure, 50 pages from the end, whether she would go through with her revelations. In part this is due to a subtle and slow increase of emoluments and favours and quiet words which might not be illegal but which neatly bind O'Sheil – not to mention ever-so-quietly whispered hints of threats. The class system has always been the unsung villain of Mina's books. O'Sheil's sister is a recovering addict; there is a slightly raffish lawyer who has a healthy degree of scepticism towards those and such as those; there is a sense of how precarious careers can be without aristocratic largesse and protection. The double plot also makes this a tauter affair than some of Mina's novels, and this can be seen particularly in her very cunning way of introducing minor characters as if they were merely 'also starring'. One character is introduced almost as a caricature – 'his money was as old as his face was red', 'he was what they feared they might be: rich and dull and only invited out of obligation because he donated to everything', 'I can't abide that braying fool' – an assessment from O'Sheil, and as principal character, one with which the reader subconsciously accedes. This manoeuvre is played more than once, a mild rebuke to the reader's hasty judgment when the truth is revealed. I would not call Mina a crusading writer, but there is a feeling that the topics she chooses are not random, but serious and urgent. Given the current state of the world, she is unlikely to run out of nettles to grasp any time soon.
The Herald Scotland
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
I love the Scottish bookshop that only sells romantic fiction
But it isn't just the cities the indies are colonising. Far from it. London dominates, unsurprisingly, but data shows that in Scotland it's the south-west which leads the way – also unsurprising given that it hosts Wigtown, home of the Wigtown Book Festival and Scotland's acknowledged book town. There's an almost equally good spread across the Highlands and Islands. A newer development in the world of independent bookshops is the rise of outlets catering to niche tastes or particular genres, a sure sign of confidence in the market. With the boom in the romantasy genre and the rise of TikTok as a means of promotion and the dissemination of pithy reviews there has been a slew of romance-centred bookshops opening across the Pond and inevitably the trend is now reaching these stores. Read More: In Edinburgh you'll find Book Lovers Bookshop, which was the first in the UK to open and which specialises in romance fiction. The capital also hosts Rare Birds, which specialises in writing by women. For those wanting something with a keen political edge there's Glasgow's venerable Calton Books. It styles itself 'the best wee radical bookshop on the planet', though if you wanted to test the theory you could also head for Lighthouse Books in Edinburgh. Sci-fi, comics and graphic novels? Hit Edinburgh's Transreal Fiction or Glasgow's City Centre Comics. We have nothing in Scotland to match Cambridge's crime specialist Bodies In The Bookshop – but it's surely only a matter of time. Blood list Stirling's crime fiction festival Bloody Scotland has just announced the 13-strong longlist for the prestigious McIlvanney Prize. It contains a pleasing bevvy of heavy hitters – Ian Rankin, Denise Mina, Alan Parks and Ambrose Parry all feature, as does Liam McIlvanney after whose father the prize is named – while DV Bishop, whose Cesare Aldo novels are set in Renaissance Florence, makes the longlist for the second year running. Sir Ian Rankin (Image: PA) Among the other contenders are Lin Anderson, Daniel Aubrey Heather Critchlow, Allan Gaw, Callum McSorley, and Douglas Skelton, while Edinburgh-based Tariq Ashkanani steps up having won the Best Debut prize in 2022. He's one of five longlisted authors who have been previously shortlisted in that category. Quite the production line, then. 'It is great to see so many authors graduating from the debut shortlist to the main prize and slugging it out with more established names,' says festival director Bob McDevitt. 'I'm glad I don't have to pick a winner.' No indeed. That invidious task falls to the judges – BBC Radio Scotland presenter Nicola Meighan, journalist Arusa Qureshi and crime blogger Gordon McGhie. They will announce their decision on September 12, the festival's opening night. And finally I admit I had grave doubts about how Lana Del Rey would come across at Hampden Park. For over a decade now nobody can touch her for moody, Goth-tinged torch songs wrapped up in a lyrical and aesthetic conceit which turns LA into a hazy and sometimes hazardous playground. A singer with her feet in the 2020s and her beehive in the mid-1960s, Del Rey is quite simply incomparable. But intimacy is her calling card and that's difficult to achieve in a stadium setting. So how did it go? The Herald's Gabriel McKay was there to see. Elsewhere music critic Keith Bruce travelled to the East Neuk Festival for the opening concert which featured the Scottish Chamber Orchestra performing with Sean Shibe, one of a series of concerts Edinburgh's guitar wunderkind is giving across the programme. The theatre are hotting up as well – literally as well metaphorically, given the weather – and critic Neil Cooper has been busy. In Glasgow he caught a performance of Peter Arnott's dark and troubling monologue The Inquisitor at Òran Mór in Glasgow while across the city at the Tron Theatre he was in the audience for Douglas Maxwell's heart-warming Man's Best Friend. At the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh, meanwhile, he watched a production of Ali Milles' The Croft, a ghost story set against the background of the Highland Clearances.
The Independent
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Author Liam McIlvanney longlisted for book prize named after his father
Author Liam McIlvanney is among those in the running for a crime writing prize named after his father, along with Sir Ian Rankin, Denise Mina and others. Lin Anderson and Alan Parks are also on the 13-strong longlist for the 2025 McIlvanney Prize which was unveiled by the Bloody Scotland festival on Tuesday. The writing duo Ambrose Parry, consisting of Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman, also makes the longlist. The accolade recognises excellence in Scottish crime writing and is named in memory of William McIlvanney, often described as the godfather of tartan noir. The list features five authors who organisers say got their first big break when they were shortlisted for the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize. Callum McSorley was shortlisted for the debut prize in 2023 when he went on to win the main McIlvanney prize, while Tariq Ashkanani and Allan Gaw have both won the debut prize – in 2022 and 2024 respectively. Heather Critchlow and Daniel Aubrey have both previously been shortlisted for the debut prize. Festival director Bob McDevitt said: 'Supporting new writers is at the heart of Bloody Scotland and it is great to see so many authors graduating from the debut shortlist to the main prize and slugging it out with more established names. 'I'm glad I don't have to pick a winner from this excellent crop of crime novels.' The winner of the prize will be announced on the opening night of the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival in Stirling on September 12. The longlist was chosen by a panel of booksellers, librarians, broadcasters and bloggers. DV Bishop, who originally won Pitch Perfect at Bloody Scotland in 2018, is one of only two authors who appears on the longlist for the second year in a row. Douglas Skelton, who has now been longlisted for the prize six times, also appeared on the longlist last year. – Works and authors named on the longlist Whispers of the Dead by Lin Anderson The Midnight King by Tariq Ashkanani The Dying Light by Daniel Aubrey Carnival of Lies by DV Bishop Unsound by Heather Critchlow The Moon's More Feeble Fire by Allan Gaw The Good Father by Liam McIlvanney Paperboy by Callum McSorley The Good Liar by Denise Mina Gunner by Alan Parks Death of Shame by Ambrose Parry Midnight and Blue by Sir Ian Rankin A Thief's Blood by Douglas Skelton
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Author Liam McIlvanney longlisted for book prize named after his father
Author Liam McIlvanney is among those in the running for a crime writing prize named after his father, along with Sir Ian Rankin, Denise Mina and others. Lin Anderson and Alan Parks are also on the 13-strong longlist for the 2025 McIlvanney Prize which was unveiled by the Bloody Scotland festival on Tuesday. The writing duo Ambrose Parry, consisting of Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman, also makes the longlist. The accolade recognises excellence in Scottish crime writing and is named in memory of William McIlvanney, often described as the godfather of tartan noir. The list features five authors who organisers say got their first big break when they were shortlisted for the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize. Callum McSorley was shortlisted for the debut prize in 2023 when he went on to win the main McIlvanney prize, while Tariq Ashkanani and Allan Gaw have both won the debut prize – in 2022 and 2024 respectively. Heather Critchlow and Daniel Aubrey have both previously been shortlisted for the debut prize. Festival director Bob McDevitt said: 'Supporting new writers is at the heart of Bloody Scotland and it is great to see so many authors graduating from the debut shortlist to the main prize and slugging it out with more established names. 'I'm glad I don't have to pick a winner from this excellent crop of crime novels.' The winner of the prize will be announced on the opening night of the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival in Stirling on September 12. The longlist was chosen by a panel of booksellers, librarians, broadcasters and bloggers. DV Bishop, who originally won Pitch Perfect at Bloody Scotland in 2018, is one of only two authors who appears on the longlist for the second year in a row. Douglas Skelton, who has now been longlisted for the prize six times, also appeared on the longlist last year. – Works and authors named on the longlist Whispers of the Dead by Lin Anderson The Midnight King by Tariq Ashkanani The Dying Light by Daniel Aubrey Carnival of Lies by DV Bishop Unsound by Heather Critchlow The Moon's More Feeble Fire by Allan Gaw The Good Father by Liam McIlvanney Paperboy by Callum McSorley The Good Liar by Denise Mina Gunner by Alan Parks Death of Shame by Ambrose Parry Midnight and Blue by Sir Ian Rankin A Thief's Blood by Douglas Skelton
Daily Record
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Girvan Arts Festival returns for 2025
Organisers have announced the much-anticipated line up for the fourth Girvan Arts Festival which kicks off on Friday, June 6. A weekend packed full of authors, artists, musicians, craftsmen, poets and even farmers will take place over three days. Highlights include Denise Mina, talking about her stellar career as a crime-writer, and Preston Reed, world renowned guitarist, who will be talking about his life in music and playing some of his amazing back catalogue. Opera is also coming to Girvan, with a selection of famous opera hits, a few songs from the musicals and some of Scots Opera's own work - Seal Woman. Some of Ayrshire's finest poets will be joined by others from further afield in the spoken word event Words by the Sea and Jim English will be telling audiences all about his passion – making Olympic curling stones from Ailsa Craig Granite. The Bookshop Band will bring the entertainment on the Saturday evening. Their last album was produced by Pete Townshend of The Who – who also played on it. There are two events for children in the library, and a 'Festival Fringe' has been introduced for 2025 with CRAG and Girvan Youth Trust holding workshops and events. There are Zentangle drawing sessions at the New Café Royale and the Tattie Fest is having a showcase of children's art leading up to their big weekend. Rod McCance, the great nephew of a seminal Scottish artist who spent the latter part of his life in Girvan, will speak about his own colourful career as an artist. He'll also be exhibiting his work in the McKechnie Institute, along with eight other talented artists.
