David Thayer

In the second Paddy Meehan novel Glasgow’s finest have a more prominent role than usual. Paddy is riding in the night car when she arrives at the scene of a domestic dispute. The cops are there interviewing the husband at the door. An injured woman in the background raises concerns until money changes hands. Everyone is bought off including Paddy. When the woman turns up dead the bribe becomes a curse; the fifty pound note has the man’s fingerprints, the sole proof he was at the scene of the murder.

Paddy is an excellent character, alternating between bravery and cowardice, as she attempts to put things right, hang on to her job, and expunge her guilt over the bribe. She is confused by her own ambition, struggling to come of age as an adult while sharing a bed at her parents’ house with her sister. The subplot involving Kate, a woman who has made off with a quantity of cocaine, ties in with the main story at the appropriate time.

Denise Mina doesn’t push Paddy off the edge in this one, preferring instead to have her protagonist grow up in the process of untangling a nasty mess. The main villain remains aloof from the story, but the minor ones provide plenty of angst. The Dead Hour elevates the crime novel to fine art.

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