The Red Road
Author: Denise Mina
Denise Mina and Detective Alex Morrow – two grandee dames with enormous talent. Get your eyes checked for this one. You don’t want to misread or miss ONE word!
Gods and Beasts, The End of the Wasp Season and now The Red Road delivered DI Alex Morrow to the scene of the crime, and The Red Road continues as Alex stresses over leaving her one year old twins as she snaps on her detective badge and slips into her role as the crusty and cynical Detective Alex Morrow.
Rose Wilson, 14 is an orphan. She lives in a Children’s Home, and her pimp is Sammy the Perv. Sammy says Rose looks 16 – a shame as the men he sets Rose up with for sex like them young. Rose understands that Sammy uses her, and that this is a temporary arrangement. She fantasizes about a guy in school named Pinkie Brown, her true love. But while waiting for Sammy to pick her up from a night of prostitution, Pinkie appears, covered in blood and tells Rose to put the bloody knife in his hand in her sock – he will pick it up later. Rose realizes her predicament, slashes at Pinkie and watches as Pinkie bleeds out. She puts the knife back in her sock, goes back to the car and waits for Sammy. When Sammy gets in the car, she searches for something on the floor: Sammy can’t see the blood. When Sammy asks her to get off the floor of the car, she slashes the knife again and watches as Sammy slumps over the steering wheel. She waits for the police. It is the same night that Diana Princess of Wales dies.
Rose is in custody and has told the police she is guilty. In walks attorney Julius McMillan. He explains away the murder of Sammy as self defense. He then calls a crooked cop, David Monkton, and sets up Pinkie’s young brother for the first murder to save Rose. Rose ends up in jail for 5 years for the stabbing of Sammy and McMillan becomes her mentor. When she gets out, Rose goes to work as a nanny for Francine and Julius McMillan. Their son, Robert, is her best friend: they grew up together when Julius and Robert visited her in jail. Julius has dropped dead from lung collapse and Robert has gone missing. . McMillan had two business buddies: Attorney Anton Atholl and a dubious character named Dawood.
DI Alex Morrow sits in the courthouse waiting to testify at the trial of Michael Brown, the brother of Pinkie Brown, deceased. Michael is out of prison for the crime of killing his beloved brother Pinkie and is now on trial for arms distribution to drug cartels. Morrow, the investigating detective, is being called as a witness for the prosecution. She despises Michael Brown, who has threatened her family and tried to expose himself to her. She waits.
Suddenly, she gets a call from her office. A murder has occurred last week, a philanthropist by the name of Aziz Balfour. The inspector on the crime is DI Paul Wainwright in the north. The fingerprints on the crime scene are a sure match to Michael Brown’s fingerprints. But Michael has been in custody. He could not have been the murderer.
As Alex Morrow and Paul Wainwright delve into the case, the strange becomes stranger, and Alex remains stumped. The crime scene is peculiar; there are no connections to Michael Brown.
So begins The Red Road.
Convoluted, complicated, calculated and cold, the person behind the scenes runs the show – with Alex and Paul on their heels.
The usual brilliant crime novel that we have come to expect from Denise Mina allures and grips the reader until the very last page. Oh – did you wipe the lenses of your glasses? You might want to – it’s that kind of read!
Ratings are based on a 5-star scale
Overall: 5
Review by Broad “A” – Ava
We received a copy of this title for our book review. All opinions are our own
The Red Road: A Novel (Alex Morrow)
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