Reanimating legendary detectives after their creator’s death can seem a modern trend, with fresh stories popping up in recent years starring everyone from Hercule Poirot to Swedish hacker Lisbeth Salander. But it’s been popular for half a century, since Kingsley Amis first continued the adventures of James Bond a few years after Ian Fleming’s death in 1964. Now Glaswegian author Denise Mina, an outstanding storyteller who’s shown she’s a crime-writing chameleon throughout her award-winning oeuvre, becomes the latest to slip on the skin of one of the most legendary sleuths in the crime genre.
The Second Murderer opens in 1940s Los Angeles, where Philip Marlowe is pickling his conscience over one case when he’s summoned to the vast Montgomery Estate high in Beverly Hills. Dying mogul Chadwick Montgomery wants Marlowe to try to find his missing daughter, Chrissie. To Marlowe it seems the ‘try’ is more important than ‘find’. And while Marlowe’s a loner sleuth, he’s not alone on the case. Anne Riordan (from Farewell, My Lovely) has opened her own agency, and Montgomery has hired her too.
Mina conjures a cracking tale for both long-time Raymond Chandler fans and those who may consider the originals outdated. The Second Murderer is stylishly written, full of quips and keen-eyed description, excellent plotting, Marlowe being Marlowe, and a more fully realised cast, without high doses of casual racism and sexism. Excellent.
Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
Read a review of Conviction by Denise Mina
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHORAfter a peripatetic childhood in Glasgow, Paris, London, Invergordon, Bergen and Perth, Denise Mina left school early. Working in a number of dead end jobs, all of them badly, before studying at night school to get into Glasgow University Law School.
Denise went on to study for a PhD at Strathclyde, misusing her student grant to write her first novel. This was Garnethill, published in 1998, which won the Crime Writers Association John Creasy Dagger for Best First Crime Novel. She has now published 14 novels and also writes short stories, plays and graphic novels.
In 2014 she was inducted into the Crime Writers’ Association Hall of Fame. Denise presents TV and radio programmes as well as regularly appearing in the media, and has made a film about her own family. She regularly appears at literary festivals in the UK and abroad, leads masterclasses on writing and was a judge for the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction 2014. Judge for the Cohen Prize in 2017.
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