Still Midnight

Starred review from January 25, 2010
At the outset of Mina’s stellar first in a new series, two men in army fatigues, Pat and Eddy, break into the suburban Glasgow house of the Anwars, a Muslim family, demanding to speak to a man none of the family has ever heard of. The pair abduct the father, Aamir, after Pat shoots Aamir’s attractive teenage daughter in the hand. Det. Sgt. Alex Morrow wonders if religious bigotry prompted the crime, but she soon realizes that money is the key when Pat and Eddy demand a £2 million ransom, an exorbitant sum for a family of modest means. As Morrow and her partner, Det. Sgt. Grant Bannerman, dig deeper into the lives of the Anwars, particularly middle child Omar, they begin to untangle a complex web of intrigue. Meanwhile, the frantic kidnappers realize too late they’re out of their depth. Mina (Slip of the Knife
), who’s as much at ease with cops as she is with the people they chase, laces this potent crime thriller with colorful Scottish slang and delivers a sucker-punch climax.

February 15, 2010
Mina trades the glum intensity of her exposs of Glasgow's seamy side (Slip of the Knife, 2007, etc.) for a police procedural that reveals strikingly similar results.

It might have been a routine home invasion. Two men in balaclavas, backed up by a third waiting in the car, push their way into a house, demand to speak to Bob, shoot a family member in the hand and, when they see Bob's not there, leave with the head of the family, for whose safe return they demand£2 million as"payback. For Afghanistan." Only the details don't make any sense. Ugandan-born shopkeeper Aamir Anwar and his family apparently have nothing to do with Afghanistan, with anyone named Bob, or with the remotest likelihood of assembling such a staggering ransom. When Strathclyde CID gets the case, it goes not to DS Alex Morrow, who's next in line as lead detective, but to her despised rival, DS Grant Bannerman, who shunts Alex into meaningless busywork and ignores the all-important lead she hands him. The heroine's home life, if you can call it that, is as dispiriting as her professional life. She dreads heading home to the husband who tells her,"I hate who you make me." After a whirlwind first movement, Mina settles in to what she does best—stripping her heroes and villains bare of every self-serving piety and protective illusion and exposing what's beneath.

Little suspense, less mystery, but a startling exploration of characters who stubbornly refuse to stay in the boxes they've been assigned.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 1, 2010
When two Glasgow club bouncers set out to abduct a young man in order to make a quick buck, things go very wrong. The inexperienced criminals barge into the house of a Ugandan Muslim family, the Anwars. They accidentally shoot the beautiful teenage daughter in the hand and abduct her aging father, the owner of a small Glasgow grocery store. If DS Alex Morrow can figure out why the bungling thugs targeted this family, she may be able to save the old man's life. Meanwhile, she must find a way to get along with her new partner, the arrogant, credit-stealing DS Grant Bannerman while picking up the pieces of her marriage following the death of her young son. VERDICT Mina ("Slip of the Knife") is adept at capturing the rhythms of life in Glasgow among the down-and-out. She vividly portrays the squalor of the underworld while depicting even her bad guys in all of their human complexity, which gives her novels a rare grace. Recommended to fans of Ian Rankin and anyone who enjoys a good police procedural. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 11/1/09.]Jane la Plante, Minot State Univ. Lib., ND

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2010
Eddy and Pat, two Glasgow yobs, are hired to snatch a man named Bob from a modest home in a Glasgow suburb and hold him for a two-million-pound ransom. They botch the job, finding no one named Bob, accidentally shooting a teenage girl, and snatching the girls father, a Ugandan 'migr' who owns a none-too-prosperous convenience store. Police-department sexism leads to DS Alex Morrows dim rival, Grant Bannerman, being placed in charge of the investigation; but Alexs efforts uncover the only leads in the case. An award-winning crime novelist, Mina knows her gritty hometown, and Still Midnight offers a stunning portrait of transcendent bleakness. Alex is close to a breakdown; curiously, we dont learn the full why for 270 pages. The kidnap victim is haunted by his mothers rape as they fled Uganda. Even Eddy and Pat are tormented. Similarly, Glasgow is vividly portrayed as an avatar of urban poverty, violence, and utter despair; the lashing rains and raw winds of October in Scotland only serve to deepen the sense of desperation. Grim but compelling.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)