The Dead Hour: A Novel - Hardcover

Mina, Denise

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316735949 ISBN 13: 9780316735940

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2006

Synopsis

The most praised thriller writer to burst onto the scene in years returns with a brilliant new story of suicide, murder, violence, and greed.Responding to a late night-call, Paddy Meehan arrives at an elegant villa, where a calm blonde with blood running from her mouth answers the door. She has already convinced the police to leave and soon Paddy realizes how-she slips 50 bucks into Paddy's hands and begs her to keep the incident, whatever it is, out of the press.The next morning Paddy sees the lead news story: The blonde woman has been murdered, and far from the spoiled trophy wife Paddy assumed her to be, the victim turns out to be a prosecution lawyer with a social conscience.Bewildered why the woman didn't take the chance to leave the house when she could, Paddy begins to make connections no one else has seen. When she witnesses the body of a suicide victim being pulled from the river shortly afterward, Paddy suspects links between the two deaths and follows her idea to its shocking-and deadly-conclusion.

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Reviews

Critics agree that Paddy Meehan may just be one of the most fascinating investigators in recent crime fiction—and that The Dead Hour is a gripping sequel to The Field of Blood. Purportedly about spousal abuse, the novel also features a secondary story about a woman on the run, ruminations on human nature and experience, and depictions of class and religious tensions during the Thatcher era. Paddy has evolved since the last novel; reviewers identified with her moral uncertainty and praised her hard-won confidence. The other Glasgow characters are equally lively, though their regional dialect confused some American critics. The novel's cliffhanger will make readers anxious for the third installment's arrival.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Set in Glasgow in 1984, Mina's riveting second thriller to feature Patricia "Paddy" Meehan (after 2005's A Field of Blood) opens with the 21-year-old crime reporter for the Scottish Daily News following up a late-night disturbance complaint at a Victorian villa in the posh suburb of Bearsden. The tall, attractive man at the door assures Paddy, as he had the police, that the incident won't happen again. Behind him is a blond woman with a bloody face"Vhari Burnett, a well-respected political activist and lawyer. The man bribes Paddy, as he had the police, to keep quiet. The next day the news of Vhari's murder dismays the normally scrupulous Paddy. When a suicide is fished out of the river, Paddy begins to connect the two deaths. Meanwhile, Vhari's cokehead sister, Kate, is on the run from Vhari's killer, and Mina skillfully alternates Kate's desperate point-of-view with that of Paddy, who's determined to do the right thing and bag the story. Hopefully, this won't be the last breathless adventure for one of the most entertaining reporter sleuths in recent crime fiction. 6-city author tour. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

During the bleak Thatcher era, Paddy Meehan, night cops reporter for the Scottish Daily News, is a sensitive, self-consciously overweight young woman competing for bylines with hard-bitten, middle-aged men. And it's just her bad luck to turn up for an apparent domestic-disturbance call at a posh residence where the cops take a bribe from the man who answers the door. Paddy sees a battered woman behind him and manages to ask a few questions before the man presses a large, blood-soaked bill into her hand and slams the door before she can return it. She writes up the story anyway. But when the woman turns up dead, guilt-wracked Paddy reports the attempted bribe to the cops and frets about losing her career when word reaches her editor. In the meantime, she'll open her own dogged investigation into the murder. In her second outing, Paddy holds up as a refreshingly realistic character that readers will eagerly embrace--warts, neuroses, and all. Mina also provides a gritty, authentic look at daily journalism's sausage-making process. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316735949
• ISBN 13: 9780316735940
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352