Lies of the Land

October 31, 2016
A prominent Glaswegian lawyer’s murder propels Dolan’s compelling sequel to 2015’s Potter’s Field. After a night on the town with friends, prosecutor Maddy Shannon awakens the next morning to find herself fully clothed but in bed with a strange man, who turns out to be defense attorney Doug Mason of the prestigious firm of JCG Miller. Mason soon gets a text informing him that his boss, Julian Miller, has been murdered. Shannon has a habit of becoming too involved too fast in her cases, but that doesn’t stop her poking into the homicide, which has landed on the plate of her policeman friend, Det. Insp. Alan Coulter. She learns that Miller also went out the previous night, with fellow legal partner Bill Crichton and a real estate bigwig, Tom Hughes. As Coulter digs deeper into Miller’s professional and personal life, the case takes an explosive turn as a second and then a third body turns up, all of them linked. A sharply drawn heroine, brutal violence with a shot of dark humor—this is classic Tartan noir.

October 1, 2016
The murder of a prominent Scottish lawyer reopens an old case and new wounds.When a hung-over Maddalena di Rio Shannon, deputy Procurator Fiscal, wakes up next to a strange man, at least theyre both fully clothed. And she knows who he is: Doug Mason, a defense attorney with the Glasgow law firm JCG Miller. Before they can reflect on their semi-compromising situation, Doug gets a text that his boss, Julian Miller, has been killed. Although Maddy has a reputation for interfering in cases long before they come to trial, she resists the temptation to visit the crime scene and instead lets DI Alan Coulter, the lead detective, handle the initial investigation. Coulter learns that Miller, his associate Bill Crichton, and Tom Hughes, a successful real estate developer, had dined together. Crichton left early; Hughes and Miller stayed on until the early hours; then Miller went to his office, where he was shot at his desk. After Maddy discovers by chance that Crichton and Millers wife are romantically involved, Crichton begs Maddy to keep his secret shortly before falling from the third floor of his house. As the complications pile up (a missing file, a link to a negligence lawsuit that Maddy had tried and lost, a shipment of guns, a mysterious fourth man in league with Hughes, Miller, and Crichton), Maddy must deal with her long-distance lover, ward off Masons advances, and decide whether she wants a reunion with her newly reappeared father. Shes 40 and drinks too much, her career is on a shoogly nail, her mums a pain in the bahookie, and she should let others handle the Miller case. But she wont give it up, despite a warning that she may be the next target. Glasgow is as much a characterand as contradictory a mix of light and darkas Dolans very human heroine in this complex sequel to Potters Field (2015).

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