{"id":7982,"date":"2019-06-03T06:12:30","date_gmt":"2019-06-03T10:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7982"},"modified":"2019-06-03T06:41:05","modified_gmt":"2019-06-03T10:41:05","slug":"conviction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7982","title":{"rendered":"*****Conviction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Denise Mina \u2013 In her new deftly plotted crime thriller,\nDenise Mina uses a compelling story-within-a-story to draw you in. First-person\nnarrator Anna McDonald lives in Glasgow with husband Hamish and two young\ndaughters. Early one morning, she\u2019s listening to a true-crime podcast about the\nsinking of the Dana<\/em>, a private yacht\nmoored in France\u2019s \u00cele de R\u00e9. The boat suffered an explosion below decks and\nsank, drowning a father and his two grown children. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna is a dispassionate listener to this story until it mentions\nthe yacht-owner\u2019s name, Leon Parker. She knows him. Years before, when she worked\nas a maid at an exclusive Scottish holiday resort, Parker was a guest, and she\nremembers him fondly. \u201cOh, God, Leon\u2019s laugh. So dark and wild you could drown\na bag of kittens in it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna can\u2019t reminisce forever, though, she has to awaken the\nchildren and her husband and start their day. In a frenzy of morning\npreparations, Anna finally answers the knock at the door. Her best friend\nEstelle is there with a roller bag, and Hamish is at the top of the stairs, his\nown roller bag beside him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hamish is leaving her for Estelle. He\u2019s keeping the house\nand the girls. Anna will get money. Throughout this roller-coaster of a story, Mina\neffectively conveys Anna\u2019s erratic state of mind, and while her character\ndoesn\u2019t always make the best decisions, you can believe in her. She\u2019s prickly and<\/em> charming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And she has secrets. She wasn\u2019t always Anna McDonald. She\nwas Sophie Bukaran until she was raped by four footballers. The case attracted\nunwanted notoriety, the fans never forgave her, and team owner Gretchen Tiegler\ntried to get her killed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon Estelle\u2019s husband Fin Cohen arrives. He\u2019s an instantly\nrecognizable member of a popular band who is as well known for being anorexic\nas for his music. Without thought of logistics or consequences, Anna and Fin\nlaunch into a road trip to flee the reminders of their abandonment. As they\nlisten to the podcast episodes in the car, Fin also becomes intrigued with the Dana<\/em>\u2019s sinking and its reputation of\nbeing haunted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, the two begin their own series of podcasts, asking new questions about the crime. Thanks to Fin\u2019s celebrity and the almost immediate outing of Anna as Sophie, their forays into pseudo-journalism attract an improbably large audience. Sophie is afraid the attention will spark renewed risk from Tiegler and her minions\u2014not only to her. Her daughters are vulnerable too. Fin tells her she\u2019s being paranoid, until he has a fright of his own. \u201cNow that Fin was scared too, my paranoia never came up again.\u201d Love Sophie\u2019s sly humor!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re in for quite an adventure, at times a deadly one,\nwith Mina\u2019s intriguing tale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a quirkier side of Glasgow crime, I\u2019d also recommend the\nentertaining adventure of book store clerk, inadvertent murderer, and fugitive\ncrime-fighter Jen Carter in Russell D. McLean\u2019s Ed\u2019s Dead<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo: Jan Alexander from Pixabay.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Denise Mina \u2013 In her new deftly plotted crime thriller, Denise Mina uses a compelling story-within-a-story to draw you in. First-person narrator Anna McDonald lives in Glasgow with husband Hamish and two young daughters. Early one morning, she\u2019s listening … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"*****Conviction - Denise Mina's new mystery thriller is an entertaining story about two out-of-their-depth \"investigators.\" Sly humor, likeable characters! ","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1335,52,40,3,126],"tags":[1574,1573],"class_list":["post-7982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-amateur-detective","category-crime","category-fiction","category-mystery","category-reading-2","tag-conviction","tag-denise-mina"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/sailboat.jpg?fit=327%2C360&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-24K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7982"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7985,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7982\/revisions\/7985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}