Denise Mina rolls up her sleeves and flexes her literary muscles in this atmospheric crime tale set in 1950s Glasgow. Based, somewhat loosely, on real events it focuses on two men and a notorious murder trial. William Watt is an ambitious businessman and Peter Manuel is a convicted rapist and a proven liar. Watt’s wife, sister-in-law and daughter are shot dead in their beds in the family home. We switch between Manuel’s trial and a macabre night of drinking with the egotistical Watt and psychopathic Manuel in the months before his arrest. Unapologetically Scottish, it is a delicious evocation of a dark and violent Glasgow with tone-perfect dialogue.
