Denise Mina’s 11th crime novel, The Red Road (Orion, £12.99), is one of her best, which is saying a good deal. Set in Glasgow, it marks the return of Detective Inspector Alex Morrow, mother of twins, sister of a gangster and equipped with too many sharp edges to prosper in her career. She’s a key prosecution witness at the trial of Michael Brown, one of the city’s nastier criminals. The only trouble is, Brown’s fingerprints have turned up at the scene of another murder, committed while he was in custody.
Simultaneously, a lawyer connected with Brown dies, and the corrupt and murderous organisation of which he was a part begins to disintegrate. Meanwhile, on a castle in Mull, the dead man’s son waits for the killers who he knows are coming for him. The second strand of the story, set in 1997, concerns a 14-year-old prostitute facing two charges of murder.
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