The Dead Hour
Denise Mina
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2006 Little, Brown & Co.
ISBN: 0316735949

Scottish reporter Paddy Meehan investigates domestic violence that turns into the murder of a prosecution lawyer.

Set in Glasgow in February of 1984, Patricia “Paddy” Meehan, crime reporter for the Scottish Daily News, is on her nightly beat of the usual gory items when she follows the coppers to a late-night disturbance complaint in the posh suburb of Bearsden.

It's a raw, cold night & she's loathe to leave the warmth of her driver's car, however, with the beat cops already backing down under the impressively tall & attractive man at the front door, Paddy's not so sure all is as it seems because reflected in a mirror she's seen a young woman with blood on her face & dribbling down her neck. Paddy is surprised when the woman shrinks away from being helped. Then the handsome man presses a £50 note into her hand, sending her away, saying it won't happen again. She knows everyone is on the take, times are lean & bleak, still it worries her, even as she pockets to bloodied money.

Fat & the youngest still at home, & the only one earning a living, even though she's only 21 years old, Paddy has the feeling her chances at a career & getting out of her mother's house are long gone. It doesn't help that her father has been in & out of jail all her life. & her love life? That's about as flat & sour as everything else in her life... except food.

Paddy writes up the story & tries to forget about it until the woman turns up murdered. She reports the bribe & stews in fear of losing her job. There is, however, something about this story that just won't let her go, & she sets out to find why a prosecution lawyer with a social conscience took the beatings... & ended up dead.

Rich in the Scottish language, steeped in the hopeless yet romantic everyday grind of twenty years ago, The Dead Hour is the second Paddy Meehan thriller, & because of its source story of the many variations of domestic violence -- long before laws were passed making spousal beating & raping illegal, long before the police were trained in domestic disturbance intervention -- it will provide hours of thought-provoking miserable mystery, especially for reading groups.

More from Denise Mina:
Field of Blood
Resolution : A Novel of Crime
Garnethill: A Novel of Crime
Exile & many more.
(06/18/06)

Rebecca