This book is a tour de force. Denise Mina, Scottish author of 13 novels, keeps getting better and better. In Conviction, Mina hits us with action right from the first page. Anna McDonald, mother of two married to an older lawyer, gets hit with bad news first thing in her morning. Her husband is leaving her, to go off with her best friend, and taking their two daughters with him.
McDonald is shocked and distressed, but doesn’t fight back. Readers know why, right from the get go – it’s because she has been living under a false identity throughout her marriage and cannot travel without a passport.
McDonald escapes through a true crime podcast, which serves as a handy storytelling device for Mina to give readers the necessary background. The podcast is about a wealthy family, killed in France when their yacht mysteriously sinks. Podcast chapters alternate with real-time chapters about McDonald’s shock and distress in the opening parts of the book.
Soon, though, McDonald and a friend, Fin Cohen, an anorexic former rock star, are off on a grand adventure, one part running away another part determined to solve the mystery of the sunken yacht, which is, of course, linked to McDonald’s surreptitious past.
At times, Conviction seems a tad formulaic, particularly in the page-turning nature of some of the chapters. But the formula succeeds thanks to Mina’s storytelling skills – you won’t be able to put it down.
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