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Alex Morrow #1
Still Midnight
Armed men invade a family home, shouting for a man nobody's heard of. As DS Morrow tries to uncover one family's secrets, she must protect her own.
342 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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About the author
Denise Mina
109 books2,531 followersDenise Mina was born in Glasgow in 1966. Because of her father's job as an Engineer, the family followed the north sea oil boom of the seventies around Europe
She left school at sixteen and did a number of poorly paid jobs, including working in a meat factory, as a bar maid, kitchen porter and cook.
Eventually she settled in auxiliary nursing for geriatric and terminal care patients.
At twenty one she passed exams, got into study Law at Glasgow University and went on to research a PhD thesis at Strathclyde University on the ascription of mental illness to female offenders, teaching criminology and criminal law in the mean time.
Misusing her grant she stayed at home and wrote a novel, 'Garnethill' when she was supposed to be studying instead.
She left school at sixteen and did a number of poorly paid jobs, including working in a meat factory, as a bar maid, kitchen porter and cook.
Eventually she settled in auxiliary nursing for geriatric and terminal care patients.
At twenty one she passed exams, got into study Law at Glasgow University and went on to research a PhD thesis at Strathclyde University on the ascription of mental illness to female offenders, teaching criminology and criminal law in the mean time.
Misusing her grant she stayed at home and wrote a novel, 'Garnethill' when she was supposed to be studying instead.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 766 reviews
February 21, 2014
This novel features a cast of tortured characters, some good, some bad, and others somewhere in between. It opens when two relatively incompetent thugs named Pat and Eddy burst into a home in Glasgow, intent on kidnapping some guy named Bob. But there’s no Bob there, and the panicked family in the home insists that they don’t know anyone named Bob. The thugs refuse to believe them and, since Bob isn’t available, they kidnap the family’s elderly father instead, this after Pat accidentally shoots the family’s daughter in the hand. Pat and Eddie promise to bring the father back as soon as the family forks over two million pounds in ransom.
By rights, the case should be assigned to DI Alex Morrow, but for any number of flimsy reasons, her sexist, dimwitted boss assigns the case to Morrow’s sexist, dimwitted associate, a guy named Bannerman, and then instructs Morrow to follow Bannerman’s lead on the case. Morrow is not a very pleasant person to begin with and she’s deeply troubled herself for reasons we do not learn until very late in the book. She’s also the smartest cop on the beat, with a big mouth and a quick temper. Needless to say, this will not sit very well with her.
The crime and the case seem screwed up from the start. The kidnap victim is a Ugandan immigrant who owns a convenience store. The family is middle class at best and has only about forty thousand pounds in the bank—a far cry from the two million that the kidnappers have demanded. At first glance, it appears that Pat and Eddy have attacked the wrong home, but acting on her own initiative, Morrow discovers an important clue that suggests that there’s more to this situation than meets the eye.
The story is told from the viewpoints of several different characters and the bulk of it is a psychological study of them and their various problems. The investigation of the kidnapping proceeds at a very slow pace and, while it appears that other crimes may be involved, it’s hard for Morrow or anyone else to get a handle on them.
I enjoyed this book up to a point, but it didn’t work for me as much as I had hoped. For starters, I had great difficulty warming up to any of the characters. It was hard to feel any real sympathy for the family that was victimized, because they all seemed to be a bunch of losers. The sole exception was the kidnapped father who was my favorite character in the book. Whenever the story shifted to his point of view, I found it much more interesting.
I also had trouble liking Alex Morrow who was simply too abrasive to engender any empathy even when, at long last, I learned what her problem was. By then, I was completely out of patience with her and it was too late for me to reverse my opinion of her. Additionally, the crimes at the heart of the story, didn’t seem all that substantial, and, save for the hope that the kidnapped father would be saved, it didn’t seem all that urgent that the crimes be solved. Finally, there’s a love story in the book that I found totally implausible and could not buy into.
Mina is best at setting the scene, and her descriptions of Glasgow and the Scottish countryside are first-rate. She also does a very good job of creating and fleshing out these characters; I only wish that she had created at least one or two that I could have really cared about.
By rights, the case should be assigned to DI Alex Morrow, but for any number of flimsy reasons, her sexist, dimwitted boss assigns the case to Morrow’s sexist, dimwitted associate, a guy named Bannerman, and then instructs Morrow to follow Bannerman’s lead on the case. Morrow is not a very pleasant person to begin with and she’s deeply troubled herself for reasons we do not learn until very late in the book. She’s also the smartest cop on the beat, with a big mouth and a quick temper. Needless to say, this will not sit very well with her.
The crime and the case seem screwed up from the start. The kidnap victim is a Ugandan immigrant who owns a convenience store. The family is middle class at best and has only about forty thousand pounds in the bank—a far cry from the two million that the kidnappers have demanded. At first glance, it appears that Pat and Eddy have attacked the wrong home, but acting on her own initiative, Morrow discovers an important clue that suggests that there’s more to this situation than meets the eye.
The story is told from the viewpoints of several different characters and the bulk of it is a psychological study of them and their various problems. The investigation of the kidnapping proceeds at a very slow pace and, while it appears that other crimes may be involved, it’s hard for Morrow or anyone else to get a handle on them.
I enjoyed this book up to a point, but it didn’t work for me as much as I had hoped. For starters, I had great difficulty warming up to any of the characters. It was hard to feel any real sympathy for the family that was victimized, because they all seemed to be a bunch of losers. The sole exception was the kidnapped father who was my favorite character in the book. Whenever the story shifted to his point of view, I found it much more interesting.
I also had trouble liking Alex Morrow who was simply too abrasive to engender any empathy even when, at long last, I learned what her problem was. By then, I was completely out of patience with her and it was too late for me to reverse my opinion of her. Additionally, the crimes at the heart of the story, didn’t seem all that substantial, and, save for the hope that the kidnapped father would be saved, it didn’t seem all that urgent that the crimes be solved. Finally, there’s a love story in the book that I found totally implausible and could not buy into.
Mina is best at setting the scene, and her descriptions of Glasgow and the Scottish countryside are first-rate. She also does a very good job of creating and fleshing out these characters; I only wish that she had created at least one or two that I could have really cared about.
September 21, 2010
Mina's work is not for everyone. Her vicious, visceral style spews and spills across the page, messy as a first draft until you notice the control and subtlety hiding under the anger and violence.
Alex Morrow is a Glasgow police detective coping with a crumbling marriage and her shame at growing up on the wrong side of the tracks. When her commander assigns the lead in a volatile kidnapping to her loathed male colleague, she feels slighted about that, too. As the case gets more complex, she decides it's a mixed blessing and tries to save a kidnapped man even though the family is hiding many important details.
Mina uses several POV, including two of the kidnappers and some of the victimized family, along with Morrow. It's hard to tell who is more inept, the kidnappers or the police, and everyone is struggling with his own personal demons. The characters are deep and sympathetically rendered, and Mina takes her time revealing the important secrets. We don't really understand Morrow's personal ghosts until the last quarter of the book, and it works well, keeping the focus on what all these characters have in common.
The style bristles with Glasgow slang and profanity, riddled with dark humor and matter-of-fact violence. The plot grows from the characters' foibles, and some of the developments at the end feel a little forced by new minor characters. The last few scenes use parallel characters and offer an ironic reversal on the ending of Dickens's Great Expectations without ever calling attention to that fact.
If you've never read any of Mina's other work but like noir-ish writing with lots of energy, give this one a try.
Alex Morrow is a Glasgow police detective coping with a crumbling marriage and her shame at growing up on the wrong side of the tracks. When her commander assigns the lead in a volatile kidnapping to her loathed male colleague, she feels slighted about that, too. As the case gets more complex, she decides it's a mixed blessing and tries to save a kidnapped man even though the family is hiding many important details.
Mina uses several POV, including two of the kidnappers and some of the victimized family, along with Morrow. It's hard to tell who is more inept, the kidnappers or the police, and everyone is struggling with his own personal demons. The characters are deep and sympathetically rendered, and Mina takes her time revealing the important secrets. We don't really understand Morrow's personal ghosts until the last quarter of the book, and it works well, keeping the focus on what all these characters have in common.
The style bristles with Glasgow slang and profanity, riddled with dark humor and matter-of-fact violence. The plot grows from the characters' foibles, and some of the developments at the end feel a little forced by new minor characters. The last few scenes use parallel characters and offer an ironic reversal on the ending of Dickens's Great Expectations without ever calling attention to that fact.
If you've never read any of Mina's other work but like noir-ish writing with lots of energy, give this one a try.
December 26, 2019
I thought this was fairly decent up until the end when it all fell apart for me and I was left feeling like I'd eaten something that was fine at the time but left an unpleasant aftertaste.
The reader was cracking me up, though not intentionally. She sounded like she'd burnt the tip of her tongue and was trying to work around saying words that would cause her pain. At least, that's what I imagined had happened and it amused me greatly for absolutely no reason at all. I'm just weird, sometimes.
This story starts out with Pat and Eddie storming a house, yelling for Bob, shooting a teenager in the hand and dadnapping the man of the house. Random but ok, I'm on board.
Pat creeped me all the hell out; he's the one who shot the teenager and he becomes fixated on her in the hours after they take her dad, fantasizing about his future life with her and how she'll grow to love him and it's a good thing some of her hand is gone because it makes her less perfect and, therefore, more attainable to a guy like him. Hello, crazyass delusions! So scary! I was totally icked out by him and I loved that.
Eddie is his nutcase "boss" on this job, a guy who likes to play Army and thinks he's going to be special ops for some crime boss someday. He makes poor decisions. A lot of them.
Then there's Alex Morrow. She's a detective. We know from the start that something has happened to her and she's not dealing well with whatever it is and her inability to cope is leaking over into her job and she's taking it out on everyone around her, which is a terrible mistake on her part.
She gets to work on the case of the kidnapped father/hand-shot teenager, only not as the lead detective but more like the backup guy and she is angry and hateful toward the lead detective so there's that. It's interesting to see a woman self-destruct via poor anger-management; that's usually a role reserved for men. I was eager to see how it would play out.
The rest of the kidnapped dad's family's lives unfold. The sons are weird and loser-y. The daughter is in the hospital with her hand problems. The mom is the stiff upper lip type who is trying to hold everything together while she waits for her husband to return. And her husband. Eeesh. He's a piece of work, a whiny and pathetic little man who wonders why he even bothers to live when it all means nothing anyway, thinking of his mom who was raped to get him out of Uganda (was it Uganda?) and to the safety of Scotland. They're in Scotland, right?
Then the last disc started and all these things that had been spiraling toward each other crashed together in a messy and forced way and I was left feeling quite disappointed. It was bad enough for me to drop a star and roll my eyes while I walked away from that pile-up.
The reader was cracking me up, though not intentionally. She sounded like she'd burnt the tip of her tongue and was trying to work around saying words that would cause her pain. At least, that's what I imagined had happened and it amused me greatly for absolutely no reason at all. I'm just weird, sometimes.
This story starts out with Pat and Eddie storming a house, yelling for Bob, shooting a teenager in the hand and dadnapping the man of the house. Random but ok, I'm on board.
Pat creeped me all the hell out; he's the one who shot the teenager and he becomes fixated on her in the hours after they take her dad, fantasizing about his future life with her and how she'll grow to love him and it's a good thing some of her hand is gone because it makes her less perfect and, therefore, more attainable to a guy like him. Hello, crazyass delusions! So scary! I was totally icked out by him and I loved that.
Eddie is his nutcase "boss" on this job, a guy who likes to play Army and thinks he's going to be special ops for some crime boss someday. He makes poor decisions. A lot of them.
Then there's Alex Morrow. She's a detective. We know from the start that something has happened to her and she's not dealing well with whatever it is and her inability to cope is leaking over into her job and she's taking it out on everyone around her, which is a terrible mistake on her part.
She gets to work on the case of the kidnapped father/hand-shot teenager, only not as the lead detective but more like the backup guy and she is angry and hateful toward the lead detective so there's that. It's interesting to see a woman self-destruct via poor anger-management; that's usually a role reserved for men. I was eager to see how it would play out.
The rest of the kidnapped dad's family's lives unfold. The sons are weird and loser-y. The daughter is in the hospital with her hand problems. The mom is the stiff upper lip type who is trying to hold everything together while she waits for her husband to return. And her husband. Eeesh. He's a piece of work, a whiny and pathetic little man who wonders why he even bothers to live when it all means nothing anyway, thinking of his mom who was raped to get him out of Uganda (was it Uganda?) and to the safety of Scotland. They're in Scotland, right?
Then the last disc started and all these things that had been spiraling toward each other crashed together in a messy and forced way and I was left feeling quite disappointed. It was bad enough for me to drop a star and roll my eyes while I walked away from that pile-up.
December 28, 2021
The story is skillfully woven around a handful of misshapen characters centered on Detective Alex Morrow. Alex is a woman of quiet some depth...full of contradictions trying to sort out the truth of her investigation...her boss and her fellow officers...along with her painful and sticky private life and trying to find her place in the world. She juggles all this with a kidnapping...an absolutely goofy love interest between a perpetrator and a victim that she somehow manages to make us feel sympathy for, and the adventures of a truly comic Glasgow gang. Overall, it's not what I would consider a great read but certainly entertaining and time worthy.
February 22, 2019
London Road Police Station was down the road from Bridgeton Cross. Bridgeton was pretty, near the vast expanse of Glasgow Green, had a couple of listed buildings and a museum. For years it had been mooted as an up and coming area but Bridgeton stubbornly neither upped nor came. Drunken fights were vicious and hourly, streets were graffiti-declared Free States, and the children's language would have made a porn star blush.
Much in Alex Morrow's life is, like parts of the Glasgow she sees, a bit on the rough and thorny side. Her actions, reactions and strategy for dealing with her situation does not always make her the most likable person, but it definitely makes her human and alive in all her complexity.
I read all other books in this series before this one, by coincidence rather than design. I realized I had this unread and promptly ordered it and now I'm thinking I need to re-read all the others... I just read The Long Drop and wondered if that genuine feeling was due to that it was real life based, but actually, I found the same thing here (maybe I have to re-read Mina's whole catalogue). It doesn't stop with the character's though - Morrow's private life situation (the horrible background of being revealed quite late in the story) is expertly handled and with a refreshingly different, real feeling and beautiful resolution. The actions of other characters and the often awkward situations that arise all add to the same realism.
What's the story then you might ask? Morrow and colleagues works a kidnapping case that at the surface looks like a gigantic cock-up, a ransom demand is made to a family that seem to have no means to even meet a fraction of it, and the kidnappers did not grab the intended hostage to begin with. Clues to the mystery are painstakingly weeded out, but time is dear.
Much in Alex Morrow's life is, like parts of the Glasgow she sees, a bit on the rough and thorny side. Her actions, reactions and strategy for dealing with her situation does not always make her the most likable person, but it definitely makes her human and alive in all her complexity.
I read all other books in this series before this one, by coincidence rather than design. I realized I had this unread and promptly ordered it and now I'm thinking I need to re-read all the others... I just read The Long Drop and wondered if that genuine feeling was due to that it was real life based, but actually, I found the same thing here (maybe I have to re-read Mina's whole catalogue). It doesn't stop with the character's though - Morrow's private life situation (the horrible background of being revealed quite late in the story) is expertly handled and with a refreshingly different, real feeling and beautiful resolution. The actions of other characters and the often awkward situations that arise all add to the same realism.
What's the story then you might ask? Morrow and colleagues works a kidnapping case that at the surface looks like a gigantic cock-up, a ransom demand is made to a family that seem to have no means to even meet a fraction of it, and the kidnappers did not grab the intended hostage to begin with. Clues to the mystery are painstakingly weeded out, but time is dear.
June 6, 2012
This was my first exposure to the author, who apparently scored much praise for her debut novel. This one I have to say disappointed sufficiently to perhaps put me off attempting another. Certainly it captured the hopeless, gray, damp and seedy Scottish underworld. Wonderfully graphic images of council tenements, flaking paintwork and dead flowers in the garden but where was the story? The devil as they say is in the detail and to me the detail was misplaced. Of the numerous threads through the book not a single one came to a satisfactory conclusion. It is fine to leave things to the reader's imagination but here I felt that was overdone, as though there should have been blank pages at the conclusion for the reader to write their own finale. I found the book slow going from the start and to be frank it wasn't worth the battle to reach the end. I seem to be in disagreement with other reviewers who have rated the book more highly but to me it didn't make the cut. Most disappointingly of all, one felt that with the complex interactions of the characters, the differing ethnic groups involved and the personal stories of struggle and tragedy it could have been a far better story than it turned out.
March 12, 2010
I'd heard Tartan Noir thrown about and found this definition from the Double Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary: "Scottish detective fiction, or Tartan Noir as it’s called, with its brooding sensibility, brutal humor and fixation on the nature of guilt and punishment, has more in common with the Russian novel than it does with traditional detective writing." Set in Glasgow, Still Midnight falls within this umbrella of Tartan Noir with the flawed detective hero, Alex Morrow.
Alex Morrow, is prickly, slightly socially awkward, and a brilliant woman detective. As she unsuccessfully navigates politics in the police department, you can't help but wince. While things don't come easy for Alex Morrow, she's in her element piecing together disparate facts, interviewing hostile witnesses, and reconstructing what may have happened.
In Still Midnight, it's not just Alex Morrow and the other detectives that draw you in. Denise Mina's other characters - the criminals and the victims - are complex, interesting, and three dimensional. Still Midnight is my first time to read a Denise Mina novel and I highly recommend it. I was drawn in by the characters, enjoyed the twists and turns, and am looking forward to my next Denise Mina novel.
ISBN-10: 0316015636 - Hardcover $24.99
Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books (March 22, 2010), 352 pages.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Alex Morrow, is prickly, slightly socially awkward, and a brilliant woman detective. As she unsuccessfully navigates politics in the police department, you can't help but wince. While things don't come easy for Alex Morrow, she's in her element piecing together disparate facts, interviewing hostile witnesses, and reconstructing what may have happened.
In Still Midnight, it's not just Alex Morrow and the other detectives that draw you in. Denise Mina's other characters - the criminals and the victims - are complex, interesting, and three dimensional. Still Midnight is my first time to read a Denise Mina novel and I highly recommend it. I was drawn in by the characters, enjoyed the twists and turns, and am looking forward to my next Denise Mina novel.
ISBN-10: 0316015636 - Hardcover $24.99
Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books (March 22, 2010), 352 pages.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
November 8, 2024
Three armed men invade the seemingly respectable suburban home of a Ugandan-Asian family looking for a man no one seems to have heard of. One of them accidentally fires a shot injuring the hand of a teenage girl and the man escape with the patriarch of the household as a hostage.
DS Alex Morrow is determined to solve the case to advance her career but finds herself thwarted by her superior officers. She soon begins to realise that things aren’t initially as they seem and at least one person in the invaded household has secrets to conceal. However, the same could also be said of Morrow herself, so she finds herself trying to bring one person’s secrets to light whilst keeping her own in the dark.
This is a very well constructed thriller-police procedural with some memorable characters and a whole host of plot twists right until the end.
DS Alex Morrow is determined to solve the case to advance her career but finds herself thwarted by her superior officers. She soon begins to realise that things aren’t initially as they seem and at least one person in the invaded household has secrets to conceal. However, the same could also be said of Morrow herself, so she finds herself trying to bring one person’s secrets to light whilst keeping her own in the dark.
This is a very well constructed thriller-police procedural with some memorable characters and a whole host of plot twists right until the end.
July 23, 2016
I realized a few months ago that I'd missed several releases from Denise Mina. But I mistakenly thought the Alex Morrow series was the Paddy Meehan series and started about 3 books in. Luckily you can do any Alex Morrow book as a standalone, but I've gone back and read them all out of order, with this first one as my 4th. I actually think I did read this one before, it felt familiar, but I had forgotten basically everything so I got to enjoy it all over again.
Definitely one of the strongest Alex Morrow books, even though it's set much earlier than the others and Morrow's personal life isn't as strong a presence. Mina slowly opens her up to you, and while her backstory is complex, she doesn't hit you with trauma and tragedy the way a lot of other crime novels do. I always enjoy the way Mina mixes the stories of the criminals Morrow chases and their victims and gives them voice. This is done particularly well here, with Pat (kidnapper) and Amir (hostage) becoming just as vivid on the page as Alex herself.
Following Morrow is more interesting than following your average detective, because so much of what she does is navigating the internal politics of her department. Sometimes she is able to use it to her advantage, and sometimes it frustrates her so much that it hurts her case. It feels so real, so honest.
I just can't say enough good things about Denise Mina. I did this one on audiobook as I've done most of the others and I highly recommend this reader and her lovely Scottish accent that really helps you develop a sense of place and rhythm in the story.
Definitely one of the strongest Alex Morrow books, even though it's set much earlier than the others and Morrow's personal life isn't as strong a presence. Mina slowly opens her up to you, and while her backstory is complex, she doesn't hit you with trauma and tragedy the way a lot of other crime novels do. I always enjoy the way Mina mixes the stories of the criminals Morrow chases and their victims and gives them voice. This is done particularly well here, with Pat (kidnapper) and Amir (hostage) becoming just as vivid on the page as Alex herself.
Following Morrow is more interesting than following your average detective, because so much of what she does is navigating the internal politics of her department. Sometimes she is able to use it to her advantage, and sometimes it frustrates her so much that it hurts her case. It feels so real, so honest.
I just can't say enough good things about Denise Mina. I did this one on audiobook as I've done most of the others and I highly recommend this reader and her lovely Scottish accent that really helps you develop a sense of place and rhythm in the story.
April 14, 2010
I've really enjoyed Mina's previous books but this one disappointed me. I found the shifting narration to be jarring. The characters were flat and unconvincing, and the vast majority of them were unlikeable, including the lead detective, Alex Morrow. The story just didn't seem to have any meat on its bones; parts (Pat's infatuation with the kidnap victim's daughter) were unbelievable, parts were extraneous (the entire side story about Alex's half-brother served no discernible point), and much of it was dull.
May 21, 2016
I read this book in 2009 and remembered none of it. Not that it was immemorable but I tend to forget most mystery/police procedural plot details. This is the first Alex Morrow novel by Mina. I love the gritty Glasgow these novels portray and the character Morrow as well.
A group of Glasgow thugs invade the home in a modest neighborhood. When they don't find the person they are looking for, they snatch the father, a 60 year old Muslim shopkeeper. A family member is shot in the melee and Morrow comes in trying to find the kidnapped father, as well as get to the bottom of the mystery of why the thugs chose this family.
The audiobook was deftly narrated and brought the setting to life.
A group of Glasgow thugs invade the home in a modest neighborhood. When they don't find the person they are looking for, they snatch the father, a 60 year old Muslim shopkeeper. A family member is shot in the melee and Morrow comes in trying to find the kidnapped father, as well as get to the bottom of the mystery of why the thugs chose this family.
The audiobook was deftly narrated and brought the setting to life.
May 13, 2017
"Still Midnight" is a bit of an uneven read. I was really struggling to get into the story for the first half of the book. In most fiction genres, I enjoy multiple POV. But the technique just does not work for mysteries. I'd much rather follow the case with the main character(s) and pick up clues as she/he gathers them, working out a solution at the same pace.
I did like Alex Morrow more as the story wore on. Bit by bit, the reader picks up clues to her home life and past and we come to understand why she is the way she is. In other reviews some people state a lack of sympathy for Alex, characterizing her as a bitch. I felt the opposite. Losing a child is probably the deepest grief a person can suffer. I've known a couple of people who've lost young children and it's a loss a person never recovers from fully. Alex is filled with anger, guilt and frustration. She's certainly not a happy person and she can't stand to see anyone else happy, either. If she was this way for no particular reason, I could see her as off-putting. But, my God, she's learning to cope and move on in life without her child. And she's not as cold-hearted as the reader might fear, a scene near the end with her husband proof enough. I look forward to following her journey further and seeing if she can overcome such a tragic loss. I also thought Alex' backstory and the relationship between her and her brother was interesting. Can't wait to see where it will go from here since Danny misconstrued her reasons for bursting into the warehouse where he was doing business. And her colleague, Bannerman, is a huge a-hole. Some of the best parts were when Alex outfoxed him.
The very ending, however, was ridiculous. I might be able to believe the romantic fantasies Pat had concerning the young woman he shot. But that Aleesha is happy to run off with him is asking the reader to suspend disbelief in the extreme.
So, slow beginning, tight middle to near the end, but a very unsatisfying conclusion.
I did like Alex Morrow more as the story wore on. Bit by bit, the reader picks up clues to her home life and past and we come to understand why she is the way she is. In other reviews some people state a lack of sympathy for Alex, characterizing her as a bitch. I felt the opposite. Losing a child is probably the deepest grief a person can suffer. I've known a couple of people who've lost young children and it's a loss a person never recovers from fully. Alex is filled with anger, guilt and frustration. She's certainly not a happy person and she can't stand to see anyone else happy, either. If she was this way for no particular reason, I could see her as off-putting. But, my God, she's learning to cope and move on in life without her child. And she's not as cold-hearted as the reader might fear, a scene near the end with her husband proof enough. I look forward to following her journey further and seeing if she can overcome such a tragic loss. I also thought Alex' backstory and the relationship between her and her brother was interesting. Can't wait to see where it will go from here since Danny misconstrued her reasons for bursting into the warehouse where he was doing business. And her colleague, Bannerman, is a huge a-hole. Some of the best parts were when Alex outfoxed him.
The very ending, however, was ridiculous. I might be able to believe the romantic fantasies Pat had concerning the young woman he shot. But that Aleesha is happy to run off with him is asking the reader to suspend disbelief in the extreme.
So, slow beginning, tight middle to near the end, but a very unsatisfying conclusion.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 9, 2011
"Transcending the genre" implies something backhanded about "the genre" and i am a big fan of the genre. Denise Mina is a big star of the genre and I'm a big fan of hers so I expected something great with this book. What I didn't expect was how great it was going to be. It starts off very straightforward but as it progresses the spotlight of the story seems to pull back and illuminate the depths of all the characters tangled in the plot. It's here that Mina shines even brighter with writing that calls to mind not only Raymond Chandler but (to my thinking)even William Faulkner and THE KITE RUNNER. Neither is it limited in tone--it's by turns gritty, funny, hopeful, dire and even romantic. On top of all of this, she remains a master of "the genre". The case never becomes secondary to these narrative twists and turns. It's like a treadmill on which all the characters are running until their resolutions. The end is such a surprise I had to read it again first to see if i'd read it right and then because i had read it right--just to enjoy it. Really wonderful stuff!
July 16, 2018
I enjoyed Mina's Garnethill trilogy in the early 00's, but then let her fall off my radar. Why, Jannie, why?!? Still Midnight is the first of what are now five (I think) crime novels starring Glasgow detective Alex Morrow, and it is everything I want in a mystery, including a complex (and, OK, troubled) protagonist and a character-driven plot that pays more attention to family & sociopolitical dynamics than serial killers and gore. I'm definitely in for more of Mina.
September 10, 2016
I really hate to add another book to my "can't finish 2014" shelf so soon, but I have no interest in this book. It's rather clumsily written and I'm not interested in the crime, the police officers, anything. Some of the problem is the point of view switches between the criminals and the main officer, Alex Morrow. Since I already know who did the crime (if not exactly why), I'm not so interested in watching the police find the culprits. If an author is going to tell me right up front who did what, then the suspense has to come from the tension between the characters and the underlying reason for the crime. Mina can't pull off that trick for me. The pace of the novel is loaded down with extraneous details and the bad guys aren't really bad enough for me to feel anger and want justice. Mostly they're stupid. Alex Morrow, as the one of the investigating officers and who narrates the investigation from her point of view, is fairly bland as well. That's amusing because she likes to be bland to to fit in and fly under the radar. Well, she's done her job so successfully I don't want to read about her. At this point, I think I've got more books on my "can't finish shelf" than I've read. Too many crappy books finding their way to me.
January 6, 2024
I had a slow go with this one as it was chaos. The main character Alex Morrow, a female, was just a boxed up flood of emotions. We see her work through a bizarre case to a successful end and there are only a few personal aspects alongside her work. While we get Morrow's feelings and intelligence, we still don't get the answers I wanted about her history. I suppose that may take time since this is a series. Morrow felt smart but everything else about the police was rather incompetent.
September 22, 2014
London Road Police Station was down the road from Bridgeton Cross... The door was always open to the public, welcoming them into an empty lobby with freestanding poster displays of friendly policemen and women chortling happily. For safety reasons the front bar wasn't manned. The duty sergeant could see the lobby through a one-way mirror and CCTV. He came out in his shirtsleeves if the member of the public didn't look tooled up or mad with the drink, but if they had as much as an air of melancholy about them he brought his deputy and a nightstick ...
Claustrophobic, enfolded in workplace discontent, a study in competitive, backstabbing incompatibility. And that's the good guys. Denise Mina's Still Midnight is an impressive read, and a different sort of police-procedural mystery. The story itself is fairly minimal, just enough to keep the meter ticking; the investigation is standard fare, banal even. The villains are mostly from the fookin'-eedjut school; and that includes even the learning-curve principal antagonist, who goes kind of sideways, over the course of the story.
The program here seems to be that establishing the routine will include not only the regular functions of the detectives, but the writhing dysfunction under the surface. Having set the ground rules, there is no other choice than to take the form itself, the procedural, toward ballistic, postal, white-out. If this is an introduction to a series detective, it is unusual and fairly nervy.
Somehow, we end up getting the most bravura of procedurals, every turn in the proceedings moving from moments of sullen inertia toward vitriol and harbored resentment. Not hard to predict that it's going to be difficult for the all-too-human investigators to process clues and case details in this atmosphere of uncertainty. And subliminally, the criminal underworld itself is matched, reflected in a kind of wavy mirror in the telling of both worlds.
Still Midnight is vaguely reminiscent of the great book & film "The Onion Field", with allegiances betrayed, and grim motives covering even worse ones. Well plotted and neatly constructed. Mina is easily as good as anyone writing mysteries, and better than most.
Claustrophobic, enfolded in workplace discontent, a study in competitive, backstabbing incompatibility. And that's the good guys. Denise Mina's Still Midnight is an impressive read, and a different sort of police-procedural mystery. The story itself is fairly minimal, just enough to keep the meter ticking; the investigation is standard fare, banal even. The villains are mostly from the fookin'-eedjut school; and that includes even the learning-curve principal antagonist, who goes kind of sideways, over the course of the story.
The program here seems to be that establishing the routine will include not only the regular functions of the detectives, but the writhing dysfunction under the surface. Having set the ground rules, there is no other choice than to take the form itself, the procedural, toward ballistic, postal, white-out. If this is an introduction to a series detective, it is unusual and fairly nervy.
Somehow, we end up getting the most bravura of procedurals, every turn in the proceedings moving from moments of sullen inertia toward vitriol and harbored resentment. Not hard to predict that it's going to be difficult for the all-too-human investigators to process clues and case details in this atmosphere of uncertainty. And subliminally, the criminal underworld itself is matched, reflected in a kind of wavy mirror in the telling of both worlds.
Still Midnight is vaguely reminiscent of the great book & film "The Onion Field", with allegiances betrayed, and grim motives covering even worse ones. Well plotted and neatly constructed. Mina is easily as good as anyone writing mysteries, and better than most.
February 4, 2017
This book has potential, but desperately needs an editor. The writing itself is fine. Dialogue is well done and the plot is fine. My issue is with the rapid switching back and forth between the present and the past with little to no transition to signal the jump in time. Sometimes, this happened within the same paragraph. It was very confusing, and I found myself repeatedly going back and having to re-read to make sure I hadn't missed something.
Same with the introduction of characters. For example, in one scene a character named Annie enters a house and begins talking to Pat. Next thing I know, there are references to Parki. I had to go back and re-read to see if I had missed his introduction or if this was a nickname for Pat.
All the re-reading was very disruptive to the flow of the book.
Clearly, Alex has a "Big Issue" that she's wrestling with, but it takes far too long for us to find out what it is. If we had known sooner in the book, we might've felt some sympathy for what she is going through, but because we have no idea what her problem is, we just find her cranky, unreasonable, and obnoxious.
Also, there's no resolution of any kind. It's like the author hit the magic number of pages she needed and just stopped writing. What happened with Danny and Alex? Did he tell her colleagues about her shady connections? Did she ever go explain that she wasn't targeting him? What happened with Omar and Billal? Did somebody get arrested? Did Eddy have to face The Big Man? Where did Bannerman go? He just disappears so that Alex is left holding the bag. Does he come back? What's McKechnie's reaction to Alex's triumph? Does Aamir ever go home? Does anyone ever deal with what happens to Malki? What's the outcome of what's revealed in Billal and Meeshra's room? And don't even get me started on 28-year-old Roy and his new 16-year-old-girlfriend. What the heck kind of plot point was that???
These aren't even all of the unresolved questions left unanswered. This book needs, "To Be Continued" as its last line!
Same with the introduction of characters. For example, in one scene a character named Annie enters a house and begins talking to Pat. Next thing I know, there are references to Parki. I had to go back and re-read to see if I had missed his introduction or if this was a nickname for Pat.
All the re-reading was very disruptive to the flow of the book.
Clearly, Alex has a "Big Issue" that she's wrestling with, but it takes far too long for us to find out what it is. If we had known sooner in the book, we might've felt some sympathy for what she is going through, but because we have no idea what her problem is, we just find her cranky, unreasonable, and obnoxious.
Also, there's no resolution of any kind. It's like the author hit the magic number of pages she needed and just stopped writing. What happened with Danny and Alex? Did he tell her colleagues about her shady connections? Did she ever go explain that she wasn't targeting him? What happened with Omar and Billal? Did somebody get arrested? Did Eddy have to face The Big Man? Where did Bannerman go? He just disappears so that Alex is left holding the bag. Does he come back? What's McKechnie's reaction to Alex's triumph? Does Aamir ever go home? Does anyone ever deal with what happens to Malki? What's the outcome of what's revealed in Billal and Meeshra's room? And don't even get me started on 28-year-old Roy and his new 16-year-old-girlfriend. What the heck kind of plot point was that???
These aren't even all of the unresolved questions left unanswered. This book needs, "To Be Continued" as its last line!
April 10, 2013
I really enjoyed this book! It's a mystery set in Glasgow with a grumpy police woman as the main character. It reminded me of books by two other mysteries from across the pond-Tana French and Kate Atkinson. But while both French and Atkinson's main characters and their personal stories tend to dominate the books, this one alternated between Alex Morrow, the policewoman, and some of the people involved in the crime. I liked knowing what was going on with the criminals, one of them I thought was particularly entertaining and ridiculous. I found Morrow to be an intriguing character because she has a giant chip on her shoulder but we don't really know why until the end, Mina gives out information about her very sparingly and that held my interest. I didn't figure out the mystery before it was all wrapped up so that's another sign of a good book for me. I'm excited to read more by this author, the library has her first book, Garnethill, so I"m going to try that one next and hope the next two Morrow books come down in price.
December 17, 2014
I listened to the audiobook as well as had the written book and this was just a confusing book. I can say that now that I'm done with the book that I really have no idea why the events happened nor understand the ending. The audiobook is read by a narrator with an extremely heavy Scottish accent which was very difficult to understand. So because I don't understand the book, plot, or ending I have to give this book 1 star, and that's even reading along in the actual book when things got really confusing. I don't think I will be seeking out more books by this author. 1 star.
May 25, 2018
Oh, to write this well!
One book by Denise Mina, and I am a fan. Delightful juxtapositions of humor and despair, with uncanny characterizations, and an absolutely wicked way with words--Mina has everything I want in a police procedural. The descriptions of the city are so detailed that I felt as if I could see, hear, feel, taste, and smell each room. Protagonist Alex Morrow is intriguing. Mina wisely feeds readers pieces of the Morrow puzzle, leaving us eager to discover more in the next installment. Highly recommended!
One book by Denise Mina, and I am a fan. Delightful juxtapositions of humor and despair, with uncanny characterizations, and an absolutely wicked way with words--Mina has everything I want in a police procedural. The descriptions of the city are so detailed that I felt as if I could see, hear, feel, taste, and smell each room. Protagonist Alex Morrow is intriguing. Mina wisely feeds readers pieces of the Morrow puzzle, leaving us eager to discover more in the next installment. Highly recommended!
June 8, 2013
Told through the frame of a home invasion gone wrong, Mina's complex narrative is a less crime story than it is an intricate and thoughtful probing of family life, workplace politics,and the inescapable organizing structure of the past on identity and life choices.
December 27, 2016
3 storylines: crime, romance, workplace — l-o-n-g novel, a writer you like or not, no mid-ground. Profanity, torture scenes (crime and workplace - I wanted to tell her coworker a thing or two!). Narrated well with a heavy accent so keep reader at normal speed till you get accustomed.
May 10, 2022
My first Denise Mina book. Thoroughly enjoyed.
April 29, 2020
I'm looking forward to reading more in this series. One strange thing...it is as if someone made a bet with the author that she couldn't mention "toast" in every chapter, and she said, "hold my beer". Honestly. Toast is mentioned constantly. Maybe that's a Scottish thing?
June 24, 2022
I didn’t know I enjoyed reading about a policewoman who is not so much grumpy as had it with all the crap she has to deal with. I do very much. Alex Morrow as a character is a charmer, the humour and clever plotting are additional pluses.
November 25, 2021
Definitely not my favorite Mina.
October 29, 2020
4 for its kind. It's like comfort food. She pivots every book/series; quite a range.
July 14, 2013
I received this book from Hachette publishing as a participant on the book club at http://www.devourerofbooks.com.
Initially I had difficulty with this book. Upon reflection, I found that the chapters that held the character of DS Alex Morrow and the investigation really held my interest. However the chapters that was from the point of view of one of the criminals, Pat was less engaging. After finishing the book I saw that this was a shame as his story and that of his family was part of a interesting relection on family.
The general overview is that 2 men enter the home of the Anwar family screaming for Bob. No one there has that name and it seems like this is a botched home invasion. The invaders take the father and tell the family they will get him back when they get their money. Written as a mystery, who is Bob? Why do they think he has this money, will they find Mr. Anwar? and police procedural the really story is of families.
Alex Morrow a DS in the Glasgow police, is married but reluctant to go home. We discover her back story and see it clash with her investigation.
The Anwar patriarch is a immigrant from Uganda. Traditional, he takes pleaure in his nontradional children.
Pat, one of the armed gunman a part of a family we don't really get to meet and understand until the end of the book.
Mina's exploration of these families throughout the book are the real story for this reader. Families, the interactions, believes, culture clashes, desires to be different from and yet part of are the stories of great literature. For me, Mina fumbled by not including the story of Pat earlier in the book which would have engaged this reader much earlier. Still, I'll be reading the next in the series to find out more about the interesting and complex Alex Morrow.
3.5 of 5 stars.
Initially I had difficulty with this book. Upon reflection, I found that the chapters that held the character of DS Alex Morrow and the investigation really held my interest. However the chapters that was from the point of view of one of the criminals, Pat was less engaging. After finishing the book I saw that this was a shame as his story and that of his family was part of a interesting relection on family.
The general overview is that 2 men enter the home of the Anwar family screaming for Bob. No one there has that name and it seems like this is a botched home invasion. The invaders take the father and tell the family they will get him back when they get their money. Written as a mystery, who is Bob? Why do they think he has this money, will they find Mr. Anwar? and police procedural the really story is of families.
Alex Morrow a DS in the Glasgow police, is married but reluctant to go home. We discover her back story and see it clash with her investigation.
The Anwar patriarch is a immigrant from Uganda. Traditional, he takes pleaure in his nontradional children.
Pat, one of the armed gunman a part of a family we don't really get to meet and understand until the end of the book.
Mina's exploration of these families throughout the book are the real story for this reader. Families, the interactions, believes, culture clashes, desires to be different from and yet part of are the stories of great literature. For me, Mina fumbled by not including the story of Pat earlier in the book which would have engaged this reader much earlier. Still, I'll be reading the next in the series to find out more about the interesting and complex Alex Morrow.
3.5 of 5 stars.
January 24, 2021
Two gunmen burst into the middle-class home of immigrant Muslims in Glasgow, looking for "Bob," whom residents claim not to know. After demanding money, and accidentally shooting the hand off the teenage daughter, the gunmen leave with the father of the extended family who lived in the house, expecting ransom in the future.
Alex Morrow is a dedicated police investigator who isn't a "people-person". I empathize. I always thought that it was more important to do a good job than to stroke the egos of the powers-that-be; but that isn't how it works, is it? You gotta play politics and Alex Morrow is about as good at it as I am. Which is not good at all. Her boss decides that even though this should be her case that he is going to give it to Bannerman, a guy who knows how to play the game. Alex is smarter than Bannerman, tho, and picks up on things that he misses and makes progress where he misses clues.
The story is told through the eyes of Eddy and Pat, the two kidnappers. The reader is meant to feel empathy for one of them, and contempt for the other. One has avoided a life of crime (up until now,) although he was born into it; while the other swaggers and struts, but is an idiot and a bully trying to make his bones.
The characters are complicated and compelling; the story is complex and also compelling. There are twists and turns and I had no idea how this was going to turn out, but I was really rooting for certain characters. The ending was so unexpected yet so satisfying that I had to sit back in my chair and ponder it for quite a while. I like to imagine how the story goes forward...That makes for an excellent book.
Alex Morrow is a dedicated police investigator who isn't a "people-person". I empathize. I always thought that it was more important to do a good job than to stroke the egos of the powers-that-be; but that isn't how it works, is it? You gotta play politics and Alex Morrow is about as good at it as I am. Which is not good at all. Her boss decides that even though this should be her case that he is going to give it to Bannerman, a guy who knows how to play the game. Alex is smarter than Bannerman, tho, and picks up on things that he misses and makes progress where he misses clues.
The story is told through the eyes of Eddy and Pat, the two kidnappers. The reader is meant to feel empathy for one of them, and contempt for the other. One has avoided a life of crime (up until now,) although he was born into it; while the other swaggers and struts, but is an idiot and a bully trying to make his bones.
The characters are complicated and compelling; the story is complex and also compelling. There are twists and turns and I had no idea how this was going to turn out, but I was really rooting for certain characters. The ending was so unexpected yet so satisfying that I had to sit back in my chair and ponder it for quite a while. I like to imagine how the story goes forward...That makes for an excellent book.
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