Conviction: A Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick

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This is a murder she can’t ignore, and she throws herself into investigating the case. But little does she know, her past and present lives are about to collide, sending everything she has worked so hard to achieve into freefall. Left alone in the big dark house, she can’t deal, she can’t think, she can’t take it in. Her safe, predictable world is shattered and Anna does what she always does: distracts herself with a story. A true crime podcast this time. It’s a compelling one. There’s a sunken yacht in the Mediterranean, multiple murders and a hint of power and corruption. Then Anna realizes that she knew one of the victims a long time ago, in another life. Her past, so carefully hidden until now, will no longer stay silent. But she’s convinced she knows what happened. This is a murder mystery that she can’t ignore. After a peripatetic childhood – her father worked as an engineer across Europe – Mina left school at 16. “I couldn’t read until I was about nine; I was a very late developer and I still can’t spell,” she says. “I don’t think it’s about whether you were a born writer but whether you get a buzz off writing.” Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival. This was not always the case. When Mina was starting out in the late 90s, the crime readership could be said to be acclimatising to female protagonists – such as Val McDermid’s journalist sleuth Lindsay Gordon, first published by the Women’s Press in 1987, Frances Fyfield’s London lawyer Sarah Fortune, or US colossus Sue Grafton’s private investigator Kinsey Millhone.

Denise Mina brilliantly manages to be funny, heart-wrenching, gut-punching and addictive all at once: a fabulous, captivating novel Nicci FrenchThis highly original, ballsy thriller is like nothing you have read – or Denise Mina has written – before Mark Sanderson, The Times, *Books of the Year* Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. Conviction is a wholly different type of novel in the suspense genre. My favorite parts of this book are the interactions between the characters (Anna, Fin and another character named Adam) v. the chapters featuring the actual podcasts (which I think are on the slower side). What I find intriguing is how the author, Denise Mina, intertwines the storylines – which at first, seem quite impossible and then, well, are absolutely seamless. At twenty one she passed exams, got into study Law at Glasgow University and went on to research a PhD thesis at Strathclyde University on the ascription of mental illness to female offenders, teaching criminology and criminal law in the mean time. The Long Drop is a fascinating, quietly insidious work, unsettling but absorbing" -- Marcel Berlins * The Times *

Dark, gritty and chilling, it is steeped in the atmosphere and mores of Glasgow in the 1950s Choice A Drunk Woman Looks at the Thistle (2007), inspired by Hugh MacDiarmid's modernist poem, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, and first performed by Karen Dunbar. The use of social media is also very cleverly interwoven into Anna’s exposure but also as a means to find out what happened on the Dana - the subject of the podcast Anna initially listens to at home. Do you hate a husband who has left you? Especially when the next one (your wife replacement)is already pregnant. And she was your current "best" hometown "Mom" friend on top of it!Lindsay, Elizabeth Blakesley (2007), Great Women Mystery Writers, Greenwood Press, 2nd edn, p. 178 ( ISBN 0-313-33428-5). Denise Mina: I think it’s partly the second one, because it was totally unregulated and [podcasters] were doing lots of things journalists cannot do. Journalists used to be real Wild West-y, they would break into your house to get evidence and things like that. Podcasters were naming people that they suspected of the actual crime, a journalist would never do that, because they have big corporations behind them.

Bury, Liz (19 July 2013). "Denise Mina steals Theakstons Old Peculier crime novel award". The Guardian . Retrieved 14 September 2018. Anna becomes a citizen detective, obsessively investigating the case. Little does she know that her past and present lives are about to collide, and send everything she has worked so hard to achieve into freefall. One of the most talented, most daring, most humane writers of the past twenty years . . . Conviction is her finest work to date: a dark star of a novel, blazingly intense, up-to-the-minute fresh, and exciting as all hell A. J. Finn, author of The Woman in the Window In Three Fires, award-winning author Denise Mina re-imagines the 'Bonfire of the Vanities', a series of fires lit throughout Florence at the end of the fifteenth century - inspired by the fanatical Girolamo Savonarola. This is such a good novel with a mystery and thriller rolled together, two stories into one with Anna the key. It has issues that are real and current that the reader can identify with, while having that dimension of escapism that makes for a great summer read.I think it’s about having more confidence as an older writer,” Mina says. “You become more disinhibited and think it’s all right if readers don’t agree with you.” Then again, she adds: “If you’ve got someone’s attention, and you’ve trapped them into listening to you because they’re trying to find out who the murderer is, you can’t bore the tits off them with your view of the world. I think a bit of humility is good in a writer.” It is a beautifully written book, a masterpiece by the woman who may be Britain's finest living crime novelist" * Daily Telegraph * The story is taken up when her new life comes crashing down around her and she faces losing everything, when her best friend goes off with her husband. How can you fight for your kids when you are a disreputable person and if the truth comes out their lives would’ be at risk, not that anyone would believe you. With sophisticated, ingenious plotting, this is a real read-in-one-go book. If you haven’t yet discovered Denise Mina, you’re in for a treat! Good Housekeeping O]ne of crime fiction’s most acute observers of contemporary society. Jake Kerridge, Sunday Express, 2017 Books of the Year