Exile (Garnethill Series #2)

by Denise Mina

Overview

Trying to escape her own troubled past and the memories of her lover's murder, Maureen O'Donnell finds refuge working as a counselor at a shelter for battered women. When the body of shelter resident Ann Harris washes up on the banks of the Thames two weeks later, Maureen vows to discover what happened and to prove that Ann's husband is not to blame. Taking her search to London, Maureen soon encounters disturbing truths about Ann's hidden past - including a secret that has Maureen fighting for her life.

"Atmospheric, intense, and full of the disturbing flavor of inner-city lowlife." -Guardian

"Reads like a slap in the face - and a kick in the ribs and a fist in the stomach . . . like its powerful predecessor, Garnethill." -New York Times Book Review

"Stunning. . . . The danger reaches a frightening pitch."-Rocky Mountain News

"Mina offers us a complex plot with a shocking ending, all told in an amazingly original voice." -Cleveland Plain Dealer

"This is a terrific book." -Dallas Morning News

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316022484
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	10/10/2007
Series:	Garnethill Series , #2
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	182,397
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Denise Mina is the author of more than ten novels, including The Long Drop, winner of the 2017 McIlvanney Prize for Scottish crime book of the year, and the Garnethill trilogy, the first installment of which won the John Creasey Memorial Award for best first crime novel. Mina has twice received the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. She lives in Glasgow.

Editorial Reviews

Following her Creasy Award-winning debut, Garnethill (1999), Mina delivers a second powerful novel with the same self-destructive characters, notably protagonist Maureen O'Donnell, and the same grim, gritty British locales. Maureen, while working at a shelter for abused women in Glasgow, gets pulled into the search for a missing shelter client, Ann Harris, the wife of her friend Leslie's feckless cousin, Jimmy. When Ann's mutilated corpse turns up in the Thames, Maureen agrees to go to London to investigate for Leslie, in part to escape her depressing life, burdened by flashbacks to her lover's murder, fights with her new boyfriend, a job she dislikes, estrangement from her alcoholic mother, and a long-absent abusive father whose sudden return frightens her and haunts her dreams. In seedy Brixton, a closed and suspicious community where grungy exile Glaswegians deal dope and brutalize one another, Maureen soon discovers to her peril that Ann was running dope and money between London and Glasgow for a violent criminal. All the characters are richly drawn, though especially brilliant are Mina's depictions of the forlorn Jimmy--unemployed, hapless, lovingly caring for his four "weans"--and of the ambivalent Maureen, aggressive and needy, independent yet desirous of affection, confident of the future but unable to purge the demons of her past. This is the second in a planned trilogy by a writer of stunning talent and accomplishment. (Mar. 1) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Mina follows up 1999's Garnethill with another novel that is just as gritty. Set in Glasgow, it features Maureen O'Donnell, who labors under enough impediments to fuel two soap opera seasons: alcoholism, parental abuse, trouble finding Mr. Right, and not even a wee dram of fashion sense. Then she stumbles into the matter of finding out what happened to Ann Harris. Ann, a resident of the battered women's shelter where Maureen has been working, has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Has she been killed in London? Did she add drugs to her alcohol problems? Maureen and Leslie, a friendly administrator from the shelter, join forces to find out. Suspicion falls on Ann's boyfriend, the much put-upon Jimmy, who is forever caring for the four weans Ann has left behind. Jimmy falls almost too easily into the role of prime suspect until Maureen and Leslie start rooting around in the less savory parts of Glasgow and London to uncover the truth. A good suggestion for anyone who appreciates their mysteries dark, while the female bonding should appeal especially to fans of the Val McDermid mysteries. Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

As her brother Liam tells her, it's worse than unbelievable; it's statistically implausible that Maureen O'Donnell would know two people who got killed within six months. Actually, Maureen knows a lot more unlikely people than Ann Harris, the battered wife Maureen's women's-shelter friend Leslie Findlay found quarters for all too shortly before Ann vanished, only to reappear sewn up in a mattress tossed into the Thames. There's Liam himself, a retired drug dealer, and Maureen's abusive father, now suddenly and suspiciously restored to the bosom of his family. There's the hopelessly alcoholic mother who starts off her daughter's adventures with yet another battle over whether Michael O'Donnell really did molest his daughter. There's the killer Maureen helped nail in her searing debut, Garnethill (1999), still threatening her from the mental hospital he's trying to get released from. And, when Maureen—stung with pity for Ann's downtrodden, improbably accused husband Jimmy and the four children who'll be left homeless if he's convicted of her murder—travels to London to retrace Ann's final days, she finds herself up to her armpits in lowlifes, as unsavory barmen, shopgirls, informants, drug couriers, and high-level dealers rush to make her acquaintance. The results are as hallucinatory and nearly as claustrophobic (the worm's-eye view of London making it look as sorry as Glasgow) as in Maureen's first outing, but now focused less sharply by a narration less tightly tied to Maureen's scabrously comical point of view and a story that, however harrowing, isn't her own. Dozens of memorable scenes and attendant monsters, but yoked this time to a tangled, forgettable plot.

Kirkus Reviews

Gritty would be a mild description for this original and tensely plotted story set in the seamiest corners of Glasgow and London. It would also be gripping, but for a very bad choice on the part of the talented narrator. Instead of reading only the appropriate dialogue in a Glaswegian accent, Katy Anderson gives us the entire text in a brogue so thick it’s like listening to Middle English. This might be quite wonderful in smaller doses, but it here includes in every sentence a repetitive upswing of the voice that in standard English would indicate intense surprise or dismay, but in Glasgow apparently means nothing. The effect is like a text marred by very frequent?! but random question marks and exclamation points, distracting and badly distorting the sense of the story. B.G. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

OCT/NOV 05 - AudioFile