Gods and Beasts

Starred review from December 3, 2012
At the start of Scottish author Mina’s excellent third crime novel featuring Det. Sgt. Alex Morrow (after 2011’s The End of the Wasp Season), a lone gunman enters a Glasgow post office, where he orders the patrons to lie on the floor. An elderly gentleman hands his young grandson to a stranger and gets up to assist the robber by filling bags with cash. The gunman then cuts the old man down with a hail of bullets from his AK-47 pistol. Meanwhile, looming budget cuts and police layoffs lure two of Morrow’s subordinates into stealing a pile of dirty drug money. Finally, a former labor hero turned politician is caught up in a sex scandal with a 17-year-old female staffer. While Mina keeps Alex’s life outside of work mostly on the back burner, she ups the stakes by taking us into the dark, beating heart of modern Glasgow, where the real deals are struck and the spoils divided.