Denise Mina

The Dead Hour Denise Mina

Paddy Meehan thought she'd be farther along in her career as an investigative journalist by now. But three years after breaking a big story, she's still on perpetual night shift, chasing police calls. The domestic dispute at a house in a wealthy suburb seems like nothing unusual -- at first. The elegant blonde in the shadows bleeding from a head injury doesn't want any help. The next morning Paddy sees the lead TV news story: the woman had been tortured, beaten, and left to die. Far from the spoiled trophy wife Paddy assumed her to be, the victim was a prosecution lawyer with a social conscience that clashed with her privileged background. Soon Paddy begins to make connections no one else has seen, and after she witnesses the body of a suicide being pulled from the river, she finds surprising links between the two deaths. The police who attended the call are twisting the evidence for reasons of their own, and her boss at the newspaper is impatient with Paddy's unproven hunches. Only Paddy cares enough to pursue a dark and brutal truth that could make her career -- or kill her.