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Denise Mina

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Denise Mina
Born (1966-08-21) 21 August 1966 (age 58)
East Kilbride, Scotland
NationalityScottish
GenreCrime fiction
Notable worksGarnethill, The Long Drop
Website
www.denisemina.co.uk

Denise Mina (born 21 August 1966) is a Scottish crime writer and playwright. She has written the Garnethill trilogy and another three novels featuring the character Patricia "Paddy" Meehan, a Glasgow journalist. Described as an author of Tartan Noir, she has also dabbled in comic book writing, having written 13 issues of Hellblazer.[1]

Mina's first Paddy Meehan novel, The Field of Blood (2005), was filmed by the BBC for broadcast in 2011, and stars Jayd Johnson, Peter Capaldi and David Morrissey.[2] The second, The Dead Hour, was filmed and broadcast in 2013.[3]

Biography

Denise Mina was born in East Kilbride in 1966. Her father worked as an engineer. Because of his work, the family moved 21 times in 18 years: from Paris to The Hague, London, Scotland and Bergen. Mina left school at 16 and worked in a variety of low-skilled jobs, including as a barmaid, kitchen porter and cook. She also worked for a time in a meat-processing factory. In her twenties she worked in auxiliary nursing for geriatric and terminal care patients, before returning to education and earning a law degree from Glasgow University.[4]

It was while researching a PhD thesis on the ascription of mental illness to female offenders, and teaching criminology and criminal law at Strathclyde University in the 1990s, that she decided to write her first novel Garnethill, published in 1998 by Transworld.

Mina lives in Glasgow.

Awards and honours

Bibliography

Denise Mina signing books at the Edinburgh International Book Festival

Novels

Garnethill trilogy
  • Garnethill (1998)
  • Exile (2000)
  • Resolution (2001)
Patricia "Paddy" Meehan novels
  • The Field of Blood (2005)
  • The Dead Hour (2006)
  • The Last Breath (2007) – published as Slip of the Knife in America
Alex Morrow novels
  • Still Midnight (2009)
  • The End of the Wasp Season (2010)
  • Gods and Beasts (2012)
  • The Red Road (2013)
  • Blood, Salt, Water (2014)
Other novels
  • Sanctum (2003) (published as Deception in the US in 2004)
  • The Long Drop (2017) based on the 1958 trial and execution of the serial killer Peter Manuel.
  • Conviction (2019)

Comics

  • Hellblazer, # 216–228 (DC Comics, 2006–2007)
    • "Empathy is the Enemy" collected Hellblazer issues 216–222
    • "The Red Right Hand" collected Hellblazer issues 223–228

Plays

Radio plays

Comic collections and graphic novels

  • Hellblazer
    • Hellblazer: Empathy Is the Enemy. Vertigo. 2006.
    • Hellblazer: The Red Right Hand. Vertigo. 2007.
  • A Sickness in the Family. Vertigo Crime. Vertigo. 2010. ISBN 978-1401210816.
  • Millennium

Notes

  1. ^ Irvine, Alex (2008), "John Constantine Hellblazer", in Dougall, Alastair (ed.), The Vertigo Encyclopedia, New York: Dorling Kindersley, pp. 102–111, ISBN 0-7566-4122-5, OCLC 213309015
  2. ^ Ellis, Maureen (13 December 2010). "Face to Face: Denise Mina". The Herald. Glasgow. Retrieved 14 December 2010.
  3. ^ "Field of Blood: The Dead Hour, BBC One", The Arts Desk, 9 August 2013.
  4. ^ Lindsay, Elizabeth Blakesley (2007), Great Women Mystery Writers, Greenwood Press, 2nd edn, p. 178 (ISBN 0-313-33428-5).
  5. ^ Svenska Deckarakademin: Bästa översatta Archived 28 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine (In Swedish, list of winners of best foreign crime novels translated into Swedish, awarded by Swedish Crime Writers' Academy)
  6. ^ Flood, Alison (20 July 2012). "Denise Mina wins crime novel of the year award". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 July 2012.
  7. ^ Bury, Liz (19 July 2013). "Denise Mina steals Theakstons Old Peculier crime novel award". The Guardian. Retrieved 14 September 2018.
  8. ^ McDonald, Alan (12 October 2017). "The winner of the Gordon Burn Prize 2017 is announced". New Writing North. Retrieved 16 March 2018.
  9. ^ "McIlvanney Prize 2017 Winner". Bloody Scotland. 8 September 2017. Retrieved 14 September 2018.
Preceded by Hellblazer writer
2006
Succeeded by