The Red Road (Alex Morrow Series #4)

by Denise Mina

Overview

Alex Morrow faces her toughest opponents yet in this brilliant thriller about criminals, consequences, and convictions.

Police detective Alex Morrow has met plenty of unsavory characters in her line of work, but arms dealer Michael Brown ranks among the most brutal and damaged of the criminals she's known. Morrow is serving as a witness in Brown's trial, where the case hinges on his fingerprints found on the guns he sells.

When the investigation leads to a privileged Scottish lawyer who's expecting to be assassinated after a money laundering scheme goes bad, and a woman who's spying on the people who put her in jail, Morrow has her hands full. And that's before she even gets to her family issues.

The Red Road is a thrilling new novel from a masterful writer, proving once again that "If you don't love Denise Mina, you don't love crime fiction." (Val McDermid)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316188500
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	03/17/2015
Series:	Alex Morrow Series , #4
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.50(d)

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

"If anyone can make you root for the murderer, it's Denise Mina, whose defiantly unsentimental novels are less concerned with personal guilt than with the social evils that create criminals and the predators who nurture them. . . [The Red Road is] as fierce a story as any Mina has written."—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

"Edgar-finalist Mina's fourth novel featuring Glasgow Det. Insp. Alex Morrow (after 2013's Gods and Beasts) is perhaps her finest yet, a brilliantly crafted tale of corruption, ruined lives, and the far-reaching ripple effects of crime."—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"Ms. Mina's narrative is full of suspense, fresh dialogue and sharp glimpses of all sorts of characters. Most interesting of all to watch is Morrow herself."—Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal

The plot is as compelling as it is intricate. Denise Mina grows in assurance and becomes more accomplished with every book; and this one is a cracker, beautifully worked-out, every scene serving a purpose. It demands concentration from the reader, but the story is so gripping that you are likely to hurry along, eager to learn how the plot unfolds. Eventually you arrive at a splendid abrupt and laconic conclusion, which rightly leaves some questions open. Then I suggest you may want to go back to savour the details, for this is that rare thing, a crime novel that invites, and benefits from, a second reading.—Allan Massie, The Scotsman

PRAISE FOR GODS AND BEASTS:

"Mina deftly stitches [the story lines] together in time for a powerful climax...Mina again plumbs the depth of the grungy Scottish metropolis, capturing political posturing, class differences, and familial dynamics with equal aplomb... Morrow [is] fast become one of the most intriguing cops in crime fiction. Fans of smart, character-driven procedurals will want to snatch this one up."—Library Journal

Extraordinary Praise for Denise Mina:

"Until further notice, just assume you should buy everything Denise Mina publishes."—Entertainment Weekly

"Excellent...Mina ups the stakes by taking us into the dark, beating heart of modern Glasgow, where the real deals are struck and the spoils divided."—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"With subtle humor and a keen eye for the darkness that lurks behind clean, well-lighted lives, Denise Mina confirms her reputation as one of the genre's brightest stars."—George Pelecanos

"[A] thoughtful look at how good people can go bad."—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

"Satisfying...thrilling....With consummate ease and flawless timing, Mina untangles the knot, leaving intact the enmeshed world she has so convincingly created."—Christian Science Monitor

"Mina is adept at portraying Glasgow's blunt and often harsh nature-but also at finding sparks of humanity and humor in even the dumbest of criminals."—Adam Woog, Seattle Times

"Like her fellow Scot, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mina relishes combining elements of the uncanny with crisp insights into the various diseases of the human psyche."—Maureen Corrigan, NPR.org

"A piercing tale that should cement Mina's rep as one of crime fiction's finest."—People

From the Publisher

If anyone can make you root for the murderer, it's Denise Mina, whose defiantly unsentimental novels are less concerned with personal guilt than with the social evils that create criminals and the predators who nurture them. The Red Road [is] as fierce a story as any Mina has written…

The New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio

"Like her fellow Scot, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mina relishes combining elements of the uncanny with crisp insights into the various diseases of the human psyche."

Maureen Corrigan

"With subtle humor and a keen eye for the darkness that lurks behind clean, well-lighted lives, Denise Mina confirms her reputation as one of the genre's brightest stars."

George Pelecanos

"Satisfying...thrilling....With consummate ease and flawless timing, Mina untangles the knot, leaving intact the enmeshed world she has so convincingly created."

Christian Science Monitor

"Mina is adept at portraying Glasgow's blunt and often harsh nature-but also at finding sparks of humanity and humor in even the dumbest of criminals."

Adam Woog - Seattle Times

"[A] thoughtful look at how good people can go bad."

Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review

"A piercing tale that should cement Mina's rep as one of crime fiction's finest."

People

Extraordinary Praise for Denise Mina:

"Until further notice, just assume you should buy everything Denise Mina publishes."

Entertainment Weekly

★ 2014-02-06
Fourteen years after Princess Diana died in a Paris automobile accident, the date of her death still casts a long shadow over the Strathclyde Police, in the fourth book featuring detective Alex Morrow. Rose Wilson, already an experienced prostitute at 14, celebrates Diana's death by killing two of the many males who've used her: Pinkie Brown, the boy she dreams about from another group home, and her pimp, Sammy McCaig. Despite her apathetic confession, she's released after a short prison term to become the nanny to the household of Julius McMillan, the lawyer who schemed to shield her from a stiffer sentence for reasons of his own. The death of the long-ailing McMillan traumatically reopens his affairs. Rose, still in the family's employ, grieves over the only person who's ever shown her any kindness. McMillan's son, Robert, convinced that paid assassins are hunting him, runs off and leases a castle to die in. And detective Alexandra "Alex" Morrow—after testifying against Michael Brown, who's spent most of his life in prison ever since he was convicted of killing his older brother, Pinkie, in Rose's place—has to deal with the discovery of Brown's fingerprints at the demolition site where charitable organizer Aziz Balfour was killed three days ago, even though Brown, clapped up for months, has the best of all possible alibis. While fighting off the flirtatious advances of Brown's defense attorney, Alex racks her brain over possible ways Brown could have left his prints at a murder scene miles from his prison, as Mina (Gods and Beasts, 2013, etc.), conscientious to a fault, casually dispenses further calamities, from clinical depression to Parkinson's disease, among the cast. In addition to the usual indelible character studies, Mina provides the most compelling plot of Alex's four cases to date, with a new round of revelations that makes the Glasgow cops the most corrupt since Philip Marlowe looked under all those rocks in Bay City, Calif.

Kirkus Reviews