I only request books from NetGalley that I really want to read. This sounded promising but unfortunately it was not for me.
A bit of a messy plot that jumped around in time. It involved an adopted girl trying to find her birth mother. She finds her Aunt who tells her that her mother, who was a sex worker and a drug addict, was murdered. I did finish the book but I wasn't keen on the writing style and did not connect with the main character either.

I'm a big fan of Denise Mina so I was looking forward to this and I was not disappointed!
Margo has her life upended when she goes in search of her birth mother and finds out from her Aunt Nikki that she was a sex worker who was killed not long after Margos birth
Margo is reluctant to get involved with her birth family and instinctively wary of Nikki. However events move too quickly and she gets pulled into a world she has no knowledge of.
I really enjoyed this. I liked Margo and her desperation to cling to her comfortable and familiar life despite rapidly changing circumstances and I loved her relationship with Nikki and how it develops.
I will certainly be recommending this book!

Denise Mina is a fabulous writer who succeeds in painting an extremely raw and realistic picture of the seedy side of Glasgow life. This book tells the story of Margot, who discovers her birth mother Susan was murdered while working as a prostitute. She has been brought up in a middle class adoptive family and now works as a doctor, so the discovery of the working class poverty stricken status of her birth family certainly comes as a shock. She attempts to delve into the past encountering threats and danger. I did enjoy the book, I certainly love the familiarity of the Glaswegian setting, but I found as the story went on it became almost too manic, so much was happening in such a short time frame that is lost its credulity in parts.

This was the first Denise Mina book I have read and set in Glasgow, my home town so I was excited to get this underway.
The story follows Margo, a doctor who is pregnant and newly broken up with her boyfriend. She was adopted as a baby and as she now is going to become a mother she seeks out her birth mother to speak to her about genetic concerns she has. She meets her aunt who arrives for the meeting very very late and she learns the story of her mother's life as well as that of her aunt. She learns her mother was working the streets as a prostitute and her sister believes she was murdered and she knows who killed her. She asks Margo for help as her aunt has been receiving letters from the man she believes is the killer for the last 30 years.
This is a dark and twisty tale, with a cast of suspicious characters although very real and having lived in this city all my life so familiar. I was a bit freaked out at bits, there is a creepy and dangerous undercurrent going on in this book and it left me tense and worried about what was going to happen next.
This was a well-written book, a strong cast of characters set in Glasgow with local dialect which I did laugh at, one phrase kept me laughing for a good few hours. It has a dark and chilling nature about it, I am of an age when I remember the news articles referred to in this novel so time and place for me was exceptional. I will be looking to pick up her novel Garnethill soon.
I gave this book 4 stars - its a great crime read, tense and raw and I enjoyed it.
Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for an ARC in return for an honest review.

Set in Glasgow, one of my favourite places. Margot, having lost her adoptive mother, split from her boyfriend Joe and pregnant goes in search of her birth mother.
Having been brought up in a middle class family she struggles with her working class family, meeting her down to earth Aunt Nikki.
Nikki tells Margot that her mother was murdered shortly after Margot was adopted and was a victim of a serial killer who targeted sex workers. A lot to take in for Margot who is a bit distant and not always empathetic.
Nikki, whilst a rough and ready character, is the more likeable. She’s has been receiving letters from her sister’s killers and is convinced he is an ex police officer and this has been covered up. Margot gets dragged into her aunt’s search for the truth and begins to receive letters.
Denise Mina really draws the reader’s attention to the difference between how the middle class and sex workers/drug addicts are treated. They really are different worlds.
Parts of the story - Margot’s ex Joe and her best friend who is in an abusive relationship didn’t add to the storyline and felt more like fillers.
They’re are quite a few twists and turns, some of which work and some don’t.
A good thriller but not my favourite Denise Mina book.
4 stars.

When Margo, a doctor from Glasgow, arranges to meet her birth family for the first time via an adoption charity, the meeting is attended by Nikki, Margo’s birth aunt. Nikki, who has been trying unsuccessfully to make contact with Margo for a while, explains that Susan, Margo’s mother, was murdered years ago while working as a prostitute. No-one has ever been convicted of the murder, and Nikki believes that Susan and other women were victims of a serial killer. The novel’s title, The Less Dead, refers to the policing attitude of the time, namely that the deaths of street-working women were somehow less notable than other deaths.

I worked for many years with women in Glasgow who had similar lives to those depicted in The Less Dead, so many of the references in the novel were instantly familiar – the drug use, the violence, the locations, the dependent and sometimes abusive partners, and the generations of deprivation within families. Margo’s first meeting with Nikki felt authentic, with Margo being completely out of her depth and mistrusting Nikki’s motives. Similarly, Tracey, the charity worker with the poor boundaries between her personal and professional lives, felt realistic, over-involving herself in a way that quickly started to feel counter-productive.

As the novel progressed, with Margo beginning to delve further into Susan’s life and character, exploring the serial killer theory while keeping Nikki instinctively at bay, I found it hard at times to empathise with Margo. Her career as a doctor felt a bit like a device, there to cement her status as a confident, middle-class woman and to give her specific bits of medical knowledge, but there was otherwise no hint of any contact with her workplace, colleagues or anything to do with her actual job. She made some very undoctorly decisions regarding things like not notifying the police when her safety was in jeopardy. Her relationship with her ex-partner Joe, who was unaware that Margo was pregnant, seemed to consist of endless conversations about Margo’s friend Lilah, herself clearly in a worrying situation.

Ironically, given Margo’s feelings towards Nikki, her character seemed to make most sense in the scenes featuring her birth family, especially the one in which she met an older family member. On the whole, The Less Dead was at its best when the focus was on Nikki, Susan and the other women they’d known. There was an obvious compassion and dedication to bringing to life the stories of these women, and Denise Mina’s writing highlighted the individual stories and situations that can become obscured when we start to talk about disadvantaged people as a group.

The ending of the story, when it came, felt sudden, and I would have liked one more chapter to answer some of the questions I still had. Without giving too much away, there were a few incidents towards the end of the novel that would indicate further drama to come; in particular, a highly traceable phone call. I know those little ‘six months later…’ chapters can feel a bit cheesy, but I think a further bit of resolution would have been forgivable here.

Denise Mina is a brilliant writer and I have loved much of her work, but I don’t think The Less Dead is one of her best.

Margo, a Glasgow GP, was adopted at a few days old and has now arranged to meet the sister of her birth mother in order to find out more about her background. This leads Margo into dark territory among Glasgow’s heroin addicts, sex workers and also sparks some very sinister threats to her personally.

Mina, as always, writes very well, but overall I found the book rather unsatisfactory. It opens with a long passage in which Margo, is waiting to meet her birth mother’s siter, who is very late. A lot of pages pass before she finally appears, which rather sets the tone of the book, in which not much happens for pretty long periods. There’s a great deal of atmospheric scene-setting and exploration of Margo’s internal state, which Denise Mina does exceptionally well, of course, and a very good, insightful and compassionate portrait of the life of sex workers and people’s attitudes to them, but it’s all within a structure which didn’t really work for me.

It turns out that Margo’s mother was an addict and a sex worker who was murdered. Gradually it emerges that someone is stalking Margo and that they know a great deal about her mother’s killing. This too is quite well done, but there are so many other fragmented plot strands that the whole thing seemed a bit of a mess to me. There’s an unrelated story about a friend in an abusive relationship, which may be intended to illustrate aspects of the main story but to me just seemed to be a major distraction. There are some red herrings which didn’t really convince at all and, frankly, I found it a bit of a mess.

I’m sorry to be critical of a very fine writer whose work I usually love, but I can only give this one a very qualified recommendation.

(My thanks to Harvill, Secker for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Denise Mina has written a compelling thriller, where middle class doctor Margo Dunlop starts to search for her birth family when her adoptive mother dies and winds up investigating the death of her Glaswegian sex-worker birth mother in the 1980’s with her newly-found ex-addict aunt Nikki. Is the killer sending threatening letters and will they strike again? Will the police help, or will they close ranks to protect one of their own?

I couldn’t put it down and finished it in less than 24 hours. A well-deserved five stars.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Random House UK, Vintage for an advance copy of The Less Dead, a stand-alone set in Glasgow.

Dr Margo Dunlop is reeling from the death of her adoptive mother, Janette, and sets out to find her birth mother. She is out of luck as her birth mother, sex worker Susan Brodie, was murdered shortly after Margo was born. Instead she meets her aunt Nikki who draws her in to her pain, she has been receiving letters from the killer for years.

I enjoyed The Less Dead, which, while not being a long novel, has so much to unpick. First I should say that it has a compelling plot with never a dull moment and some genuine creepiness. It’s not just the hunt for the killer as there are all sorts of complications in Margo’s life, notably her friend Leila’s dysfunctional love life and odd approach to life. There is a good twist in that. The third person narrative is initially very intimate with the narrator inserting their observations but that peters out into the more straightforward. I found the initial intimacy a good way of getting close to the characters immediately. The problem with this is Margo. She’s not unreliable, more unstable in the way that it is hard to second guess her as she’s unpredictable and not always logical. I think it’s a good depiction of a woman under a considerable amount of stress but it doesn’t make her very likeable.

Margo’s female birth relatives have all been in the sex trade and she’s a doctor by dint of being adopted into a middle class family. This is a classic compare and contrast/what if scenario. Ms Mina spends a fair amount of time trying to explain the life of a prostitute and the reasons for it but I think it is spoiled by the bad girl turned good story of Nikki, who comes across as much more likeable than Margo. There’s something missing from it and I’m not quite sure what.

The Less Dead is a good read with plenty to interest the reader so I have no hesitation in recommending it.

I’m afraid this book wasn’t for me I found it boring too much detail in everything I couldn’t finish it,

Brilliant story as always from the author. I loved the setting in Glasgow, my home town and found it refreshing. We'll written. Great characters. Highly recommended xx

I didn't really connect with this book, not sure if its the writing style or the fact that I didn't find the characters particularly appealing. Disappointing as I really expected to enjoy the story a lit more than I did.

This book is really gripping, I love Denise Mina, she certainly knows how to capture the reader.

I roared through this book, desperate to find out what happens in the end but not wanting to finish it.

Enjoyed every page from beginning to end.

A really thought provoking read from the author of The Conviction.
We meet Margo first, a Glasgow doctor who is about to meet a member of her birth family for the first time, following the death of her adoptive mother. It is safe to say this meeting is coming at a difficult time in her life - balancing emptying her mum’s house with being estranged from her boyfriend whilst her best friend is also facing her own struggles.
I couldn’t put this book down - I needed to know what was going to happen next! Would recommend.

When we get killed they call us the "less dead"...'

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of The Less Dead via NetGalley.

After the globetrotting of Conviction, Mina returns to home ground for this Glasgow-set mystery which links the very different cities of the 2020s (maybe I should now just say "20s" but that sounds like flappers and jazz) and the 1980s, digging up unfinished business and crashing all kinds of different worlds together - the comfortable professionals and the struggling poor, the settled families and those with chaotic lives. It's a book I really found hard to leave alone, gobbling chapter after chapter and neglecting my family and dogs. "Unputdownable" is an overused cliché, but this book is the real thing.

The junction between all of the different worlds is Margo Dunlop, a middle-aged Glaswegian GP who - following the death of adoptive mother Janette - is searching for information about her her birth mother, Susan. We first see her waiting nervously in the offices of an adoption charity, not helped by well-meaning but charmless social worker Tracey. When Susan's sister Nikki breezes in late, we see the first of those collisions. Margo's educated, professional. Nikki's... not. Laced through this book are Margo's (rather) dismal attempts to "accept" Nikki, to not be a snob, and the tendrils of guilt that grow from her failure to do this. The joke on Margo is that Nikki doesn't need to be "accepted", she has her own life which may seem a strange life to Margo but Nikki's OK with it

It soon becomes clear that Margo herself has hit something of a crisis in her life and isn't as "settled" as she thinks. She's hard up, on long term sick leave, failing to to cope with her loss of Janette or her relationship with her ex, Joe (who seems a charming man, if you want someone to turn up at 2AM with a bike slung over his shoulder). She finds it hard dealing with Nikki ('She feels as if Nikki has stolen the day from her'). It's all symbolised by Margo's intermittent attempts to clear out Janette's old, rambling house - another collision of worlds, set in an area that's gentrifying very fast.

This is the background. We also soon meet Margo's oldest, best friend, Lilah, who's in a deeply unhealthy situation with her own stalkery ex, 'that wanker Richard', a situation that's spilling out into her group of friends ('It's messy and they've all been sucked into the collapsing start of Richard's and Lilah's relationship') and we hear of Margo's brother, Thomas, also adopted. Mina brings them to vivid life - Lilah's increasingly scary encounters with Richard, often staged in front of her girlfriends, Joe's baffled incomprehension that he's not with Margo any more, and especially, Margo's more and more frenzied displacement activity as she tries not to confront many and varied facets of her life. A diversion is just what's needed! And here we are! Margo discovers that Susan was murdered and the crime has never been solved. There are whispers of a police cover-up, that Susan was one of a string of murdered Glasgow sex workers. Here is a cause she can adopt, a problem she can solve, a way she can come into Nikki's life with some control.

Margo begins an investigation - partly into the crime, partly into Susan herself and her origins and background, partly into the Glasgow that killed here: that dark, 80s Glasgow of which traces still linger and which you can step into if you're lucky... or perhaps, if you're very unlucky. Nikki's something of a guide - she's an amazing character, a force of life, a survivor. But if you patronise her, look down on her, ignore her, you do it at your peril. And Margo will visit strange places even in familiar parts of the city ('She'd swear on her life that she has never, ever seen that pub before').

Other peril also walks these pages. Mina does something awkward, jarring, very creepy, but totally brilliant with the text. Alongside the Margo-narrator, there's another voice here, mostly staying in the shadows but sometimes stepping out to grab the story, steer it down dank paths strewn with a really unsettling vein of misogyny and hate. It'll happen in the middle of a sentence. For a few words you're not sure what's going on - then you know, yes, he's back. Those words correlate with a rather sinister game that increasingly draws Margo deep into that other Glasgow, the one that's supposed to be dead. I found it very very creepy and while - as I said above - you have to keep turning those pages, I also didn't want to, for fear of what I might read next. Denise Mina takes the gloves off in her depiction of male hatred for women: it's not only that other voice, we also see Richard becomes scarier and scarier (well, we hear about it - it's mostly reported second and third and hand, which somehow makes it even worse, like a news ticker scrolling with reports of chaos and violence).

The writing in The Less Dead is glorious - always on the nose, capturing an exact moment, feeling or scene. One character, swearing her head off, is nevertheless 'serious as a newsreader'. Another 'performs looking for a taxi' to try and repel a pack of rowdy men late one night. The characterisation is also brilliant. Margo, as a GP, assesses Nikki. 'She doesn't have the sleepiness of a methadone user or the drowsy disgust of someone on valium.' Later, when she has to report a shocking crime, she notes that the police officer who responds is using the same verbal techniques for managing a stressful encounter as she's been taught herself ('eye contacting her half to death with training-course empathy'). Gradually, allusively, we learn about Margo's earlier life, her attempts to fit in (a consequence of adoption? Or just part of modern life?), her enjoyment of the privilege of being 'thin, young and white' and being able to sneer at those who weren't. Margo and Lilah's relationship at school in a nutshell: 'Slimness was suddenly a currency between them. They got thin at each other.'

We also hear about the attitudes of the respectable (police, social workers, journalists) to those in that other world - the drug users, the sex-workers - the judgments made, the failures of the police to protect the weak. Things were worse back in the 80s, we're told (when Margo delves into the newspaper archives for information, Margo 'feels as if she's reading in a language language she doesn't understand, as if she's eavesdropping on aggressively heterosexual Victorians... DEAD VICE GIRL'S FEAR OF STALKER') and the book is set up as an opposition between then and now, but as one character, an ex-DI who did her best, admits, things aren't much better, her best wasn't enough. The book seethes with loose ends, with second bests, missed chances.

And second chances too. Margo comes from a family - the Brodies - renowned for their bloody-mindedness, and if there's enough of them in her to get through all the dangers here, then perhaps she can begin to fix a few things. Perhaps.

An intelligent, gripping and compassionate crime novel. Just a superb read.

“The Less Dead” is a standalone novel not attached to any of the author’s previous series. To anyone, including myself, who were adopted at a very young age and hold a desire in seeking out and meeting their birth family, I would say that this book would very much appeal. TV’s “Long Lost Family” more often than not make out their stories as happy ever after tales where everyone is so pleased to be reunited, but surely this is not always the case when birth relations come together?

When Dr Margo Dunlop goes searching for her birth mother, she meets her Aunt Nikki instead. She finds out that back in the day, both Nikki and Margo’s mother Susan Brodie were sex workers, and that Susan was murdered shortly after Margo was adopted, one of a number of prostitutes killed at the time. The killer was never found.

Since then, Nikki has continued to receive threatening letters from the killer so she asks Margo for her help in trying to find him. But when Margo also starts receiving menacing letters and becomes convinced that someone is following and watching her, who can she trust?

Easy to read and culminating in an exciting climax, I enjoyed reading this psychological thriller although I would have to say it is not up there with my favourite Denise Mina novels. I was not totally convinced by Margo as a character – Mina’s leading females are usually somewhat more sassy and generally seem to have much more about them. However the idea and premise of the story worked quite well I thought and it is one of those books that when you start reading, it is difficult to put down.

Well worth reading when released on August 20th.

This is an interesting story, told from an unusual angle. However, the main character Margo is hard to like, and I'm afraid I didn't really care what happened to her, which made reading the book a bit of a chore. The writing style is also rather off-putting. Not one I'd recommend.

Margo is adopted, it’s a good adoption and she’s succeeded in life, becoming a doctor. Her birth mother was a drug addict and sex worker and was killed many years ago. Her sister Nikkie believes that her murderer is ex-police Officer Martin McPhail, that the Glasgow police force cover this up and so Nikkie wants Margo’s help in proving this. Margo is reluctant to get involved, her Aunt has never been in her life until now but she finds herself drawn into an unfamiliar world.

This is a dark and gritty novel that does not shy away from presenting the reality of life for a sex worker like Susan. These are the ‘less dead’ whose fates are not investigated fully as they are seen as unworthy of much effort. The author cleverly presents the contrasting worlds of Nikkie and Margo in every possible way. Margo has the advantages of a good education, an excellent career and high expectations of life versus Susan and Nikkie growing up in care, abused and then facing a life on the streets. It’s light and shade and initially Margo runs to the light but is drawn into a shadowy world to get the answers she craves. The characters are really good, I admire Nikkie who is brave and dogged and Margo becomes braver and bolder as the story progresses and becomes more likeable as a consequence. She is a very different person at the end of the book. , Margo’s friend is in an abusive relationship demonstrating that abuse has no barriers due social background but Lilah does not see herself as a victim, she stands up for herself which she has in common certainly with Nikkie and maybe also Susan. As the storyline progresses several very creepy and threatening events occur and the tension and suspense escalates. The quality of the writing is very good as it’s realistic and as dark as the places Margo’s search takes her to.

Overall, another very good novel from Denise Mina. It’s compelling and compulsive reading.

With thanks to NetGalley and Random House Vintage, Harvill Secker for the ARC.

A great story that keeps you intrigued and wondering if things are as they seem. Some good twists along the way.

A while ago I read a few Denise Mina books and really enjoyed them but hadn't read anything recently. When this book came up I was keen to read it. It was just as gritty as I remember and a very good story. I did connect with Margo although she is a bit of an odd character. The culprit I thought was fairly obvious but I'm not sure that was the main focus of the story- telling the women's stories was in some way more important.
Overall a good read but it did lose it's way at times