The Less Dead opens with Margo, a seemingly successful, middle-class doctor who was adopted at birth, in a social worker’s waiting room and hoping to meet a member of her biological family – her aunt. But the meeting, when it eventually happens, is an uncomfortable one, and Margo learns things she might rather have never known.
Her mother was a teenage sex-worker and drug addict, who was murdered not long after Margo was born, possibly at the hands of a serial killer. Margo’s aunt Nikki, who has also worked on the streets, favours a bent cop as the killer, and is still receiving threatening letters from someone who knows a lot about the decades old killing. The police don’t seem to care – a cold case and one involving the “less dead”, the prostitutes, is hardly on their radar.
Reluctantly, Margo finds herself becoming involved with the unreliable Nikki – and then the letters start coming to her as well. She is also trying to deal with clearing her late parents’ home, and cope with a friend who is in an abusive relationship. And she and her partner have split up – it is not a good time in her life.
Mina offers the reader a choice of suspects as the killer and the letter writer and tosses in a number of red herrings as she ratchets up the tension. It is a dark tale, dealing with more than just a cold case killing – there are issues of class, prejudice and identity as well.
I have always enjoyed Denise Mina’s novels, and this, as I expected, is a subtle and well-constructed work. But it is not a comfortable read, darker than some of her other books and certainly not crime fiction as a cosy escape. The characters are realistic, and all, including Margo, are flawed and do not always engage our sympathy. But it is a powerful and thought-provoking novel, as well as providing the twists and turns and moments of fear that come with the best crime fiction.
The Less Dead by Denise Mina is published by Harvill Secker. ISBN: 9781787301726 - Margaret von Klemperer
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