Denise Mina
Denise Mina
Denise Minais a Scottish crime writer and playwright. She has written the Garnethill trilogy and another three novels featuring the character Patricia "Paddy" Meehan, a Glasgow journalist. Described as an author of Tartan Noir, she has also dabbled in comic book writing, having recently written 13 issues of Hellblazer. Since 2006, she has had two plays performed with successful reception...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionWriter
journalism process
Journalism is a Darwinian process.
school warrior men
I'm always represented as a bit of a class warrior - a bit Down With Men and Down With Middle-Class People. Whereas I'm actually very fond of men and am middle-class. I even went to boarding school in Perthshire.
nice air people
We don't really go in for big family dinners, but Scottish people are famously confrontational. It's a cultural thing, so maybe we don't need to have them to clear the air. Also, traditional family food isn't as nice here so there's no payoff for traveling hundreds of miles.
heart lucky my-heart
In my heart Im just a lucky waitress.
attitude animal evil
Even if people do wrong, we're social animals, so what can we do about stopping them doing the same things in future? Saying people are 'bad' or 'evil' is just an unwillingness to engage; an unwillingness to try to empathise. That sanctimonious attitude doesn't help anyone
men thinking purpose
A man who thinks he has a higher purpose can do terrible things, even to those he professes to love.
jobs law stories
I always wanted to work at Take A Break magazine, you know, just to inject a little bit of politics into their stories. I applied for a job there after I'd done my law degree and didn't even get an interview. I only wrote Garnethill because I didn't get that job!
london grew feeding
I grew up in London under Thatcher and that really was disgusting. A feeding frenzy.
fun children writing
I have two children. They are more fun than anything in the world, and it's more immediate fun than the hard slog of writing.
thinking different film
I think graphic novels are closer to prose than film, which is a really different form.
wings guy fiction
I'd read so much right-wing crime fiction where they find the evidence and shoot the bad guy - I thought there must be another approach.
sophisticated enough reader
Novelisation doesn't imply the truth. Readers are sophisticated enough to know that.
definitive throwing
The idea of suicide is of a very set narrative, as if killing yourself is a definitive statement. But it can be just as meaningless as throwing a stone in a river.
alex aspects bit bored earlier lots morrow points quite tend
With my earlier books, I got quite bored being with one protagonist all the way through. With the Alex Morrow books, I wanted to do something a bit more holistic, so there were lots of different points of view, and I wanted to look at aspects of crime that you don't tend to look at.