The Less Dead

Denise Mina Harvill Secker £14.99

Mina is the most compassionate of crime novelists. The title of her latest refers to the murder victims no one cares about: the prostitutes and druggies. It features Margo, a Glasgow GP who decides to find her birth mother, only to discover that she was murdered 30 years earlier. Soon Margo is quite literally stalked by her mother’s awful past. This is a dark and heartfelt novel, full of sadness and anger at the undeserved harshness of too many lives.