Released, Watt decided to investigate the murders himself and put out the word that he would pay for information. Peter Manuel came forward and the two men met for a drink in Glasgow. They spent eleven hours together, drinking, driving, talking.The next time they met was in the High Court in Glasgow, where Manuel was accused of those murders and many others.

In Three Fires, award-winning author Denise Mina re-imagines the 'Bonfire of the Vanities', a series of fires lit throughout Florence at the end of the fifteenth century - inspired by the fanatical Girolamo Savonarola. Maureen O’Donnell is involved in an unsatisfactory relationship with her boyfriend. Maureen was a victim of incest as a child and she had recently been discharged from a psychiatric hospital after suffering a breakdown. Her boyfriend, Douglas, was a therapist at the hospital. Having decided to end this relationship, Maureen has a girls night out that is fueled with alcohol. She staggers home and collapses into an alcohol induced slumber. When she wakes up in the morning, she discovers her boyfriend tied to a chair in her living room with his throat slashed. This compromising circumstance makes Maureen a prime suspect. Although there is not enough evidence to charge her, Maureen remains a strong person of interest. She therefore decides to initiate her own inquiries to exonerate herself.

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

This is also the kind of novel where you see and hear (and smell and feel) every move Maureen makes, which is good and often makes a compelling tale in the hands of a really good writer. If Maureen sees something, learns something, thinks something - the reader knows it. Until... Upon finishing Garnethill, I wasn’t overly crazy about continuing this trilogy. I was interested in seeing where things went, but it wasn’t an intense desire. In fact, if I had not brought the trilogy as a collection, I would not have been continuing. However, being a glutton for punishment, I dove into Exile with the hope of improvement – after all, so many people seem to enjoy Denise Mina as an author and I was hoping to find a spark to create such a view within myself. So just three stars. I'll prob. continue the series on the strength of the writing, the setting, and if Maureen is in the next book, but I did not like the turn it took about two-thirds in. I mean, don't let me live inside a character so fully, then suddenly decide to make every move she makes a big mystery. Come on!

spiv - a man, typically characterized by flashy dress, who makes a living by disreputable dealings. To date, the entirety of Mina's work in comics has been published under DC Comics' Vertigo imprint: 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 I love Denise Mina. She writes mysteries wrapped in squalor and drama and tied up with a little crazy bow. They're usually set in Scotland, which furthers my delight (I'm SUCH an Anglophile...). And if you like that sort of thing, Exile is even more bleak and psychological than the first book in this particular series.The characters are well developed and very believable. The plot kept me up nights reading. In fact, when I finished this book I immediately started on "Exile" and after that "Resolution". These are all full novels, not skimpy novellas, so it is a testament to the draw of the series that I read them in succession without taking a break to read another genre from my voluminous "to read" pile. Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.