The Less Dead

When Margo Dunlop, a Glasgow doctor, tries to find her birth family, she finds a great deal more than most people could deal with. She already has a lot to worry about – an unplanned pregnancy, a friend addicted to a controlling partner who happens to be the brother of Margo’s partner, an absent brother leaving the emptying of their late mother’s chaotic house entirely to her. But now Nikki, the long-lost aunt walking into her life, reveals that her birth mother, Susan, to whom she bears an uncanny resemblance, was a sex worker murdered by a serial killer.

Margo lets Nikki embroil her in a long-delayed search for the murder, who has for years been tormenting her with letters that reveal a great deal about the circumstances of Susan’s last hours. The police aren’t interested: Glasgow is full of sex workers they regard as at best second-class citizens, at worst vermin to be shunted aside. Nikki is sure the killer was one just such an officer, now disgraced, but Margo’s illicit research proves otherwise. And now Margo herself is being tailed, her space invaded by someone who is waiting to kill her in a city that becomes a malign presence in its own right.

Nothing that Denise Mina writes will be anything other than thought-provoking, and The Less Dead raises issues of prejudice and value both for the protagonist and the reader. Perhaps one might wonder why a highly-trained professional makes such curious decisions about personal safety, and, more to the point, why she doesn’t seem to do any work. And though one piece of business is concluded, there is the big question of what would happen next, however inept the police might be.

Overall, however, a gripping and indeed important novel.