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Denise Mina
Born	(1966-08-21) 21 August 1966 (age 58) East Kilbride, Scotland
Nationality	Scottish
Genre	Crime fiction
Notable works	Garnethill, The Long Drop
Website
www.denisemina.co.uk

Denise Mina (born 1966) is a Scottish crime writer and playwright. She has written the Garnethill trilogy and another three novels featuring the character Patricia "Paddy" Meehan, a Glasgow journalist. Described as an author of Tartan Noir, she has also dabbled in comic book writing, having written 13 issues of Hellblazer. Since 2006, she has had two plays performed with unsuccessful reception.

Mina's first Paddy Meehan novel, The Field of Blood, was filmed by the BBC for broadcast in 2011, and stars Jayd Johnson, Peter Capaldi and David Morrissey. The second, The Dead Hour, was filmed and broadcast in 2013.

Biography

Denise Mina was born in East Kilbride in 1966. Her father worked as an engineer. Because of his work, the family moved 21 times in 18 years: from Paris to The Hague, London, Scotland and Bergen. Mina left school at sixteen and worked in a variety of low-skilled jobs, including as a barmaid, kitchen porter and cook. She also worked for a time in a meat-processing factory. In her twenties she worked in auxiliary nursing for geriatric and terminal care patients before returning to education and earning a law degree from Glasgow University.

It was while researching a PhD thesis on the ascription of mental illness to female offenders, and teaching criminology and criminal law at Strathclyde University in the 1990s, that she decided to write her first novel Garnethill, published in 1998 by Transworld.

Mina lives in Glasgow.

Awards and honours

• 1998 John Creasey Dagger for Best First Crime Novel, Garnethill
• 2011 The Martin Beck Award (Bästa till svenska översatta kriminalroman), The End of the Wasp Season
• 2012 Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, The End of the Wasp Season
• 2013 Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, Gods and Beasts
• 2017 Gordon Burn Prize, The Long Drop
• 2017 McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year, The Long Drop

Bibliography

Novels

Garnethill trilogy

• Garnethill (1998)
• Exile (2000)
• Resolution (2001)

Patricia "Paddy" Meehan novels

• The Field of Blood (2005)
• The Dead Hour (2006)
• The Last Breath (2007) – published as Slip of the Knife in America

Alex Morrow novels

• Still Midnight (2009)
• The End of the Wasp Season (2010)
• Gods and Beasts (2012)
• The Red Road (2013)
• Blood, Salt, Water (2014)

Other novels

• Sanctum (2003) (published as Deception in the US in 2004)
• The Long Drop (2017)
• Conviction (2019)

Comics

• Hellblazer, # 216–228 (DC Comics, 2006–2007)
  • "Empathy is the Enemy" collected Hellblazer issues 216–222
  • "The Red Right Hand" collected Hellblazer issues 223–228

Plays

• Ida Tamson (2006)
• A Drunk Woman Looks at the Thistle (2007), inspired by Hugh MacDiarmid's long modernist poem, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, and first performed by Karen Dunbar.

Radio plays

• The Meek, BBC Radio 3, 7 March 2009

Comic collections and graphic novels

• Hellblazer
  • Hellblazer: Empathy Is the Enemy. Vertigo. 2006.
  • Hellblazer: The Red Right Hand. Vertigo. 2007.
• A Sickness in the Family. Vertigo Crime. Vertigo. 2010. ISBN 978-1401210816.
• Millennium
  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Millennium Trilogy. Vol. 1st. Vertigo. 2012. ISBN 978-1401235574.
  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Millennium Trilogy. Vol. 2nd. Vertigo. 2013. ISBN 978-1401235581.

Notes

1. Irvine, Alex (2008), "John Constantine Hellblazer", in Dougall, Alastair (ed.), The Vertigo Encyclopedia, New York: Dorling Kindersley, pp. 102–111, ISBN 0-7566-4122-5, OCLC 213309015
2. Ellis, Maureen (13 December 2010), "Face to Face: Denise Mina", The Herald, Glasgow, retrieved 14 December 2010
3. "Field of Blood: The Dead Hour, BBC One", The Arts Desk, 9 August 2013.
4. page 178, Great Women Mystery Writers, 2nd Ed. by Elizabeth Blakesley Lindsay, 2007, publ. Greenwood Press, ISBN 0-313-33428-5
5. Svenska Deckarakademin: Bästa översatta Archived 28 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine (In swedish, list of winners of best foreign crime novels translated into swedish, awarded by Swedish Crime Writers' Academy)
6. Alison Flood (20 July 2012). "Denise Mina wins crime novel of the year award". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 July 2012.
7. Liz Bury (19 July 2013). "Denise Mina steals Theakstons Old Peculier crime novel award". The Guardian. Retrieved 14 September 2018.
8. "The winner of the Gordon Burn Prize 2017 is announced". New Writing North. 12 October 2017. Retrieved 16 March 2018.
9. "McIlvanney Prize 2017 Winner". Bloody Scotland. 8 September 2017. Retrieved 14 September 2018.

External links

• Official website
• Denise Mina at British Council: Literature
• Still Midnight review and interview in The Scotsman
• Denise Mina talking with Ian Rankin at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (transcript and audio), 17 August 2006
• End of the Wasp season review in ShotsMag Ezine

• 1966 births
• Living people
• Scottish crime fiction writers
• Scottish mystery writers
• People from Glasgow
• Scottish women novelists
• Scottish comics writers
• Female comics writers
• Barry Award winners
• Alumni of the University of Strathclyde
• Alumni of the University of Glasgow
• 20th-century Scottish novelists
• 21st-century Scottish novelists
• 20th-century British women writers
• 21st-century British women writers
• Scottish dramatists and playwrights
• Women mystery writers
• British women dramatists and playwrights
• Members of the Detection Club