![]() That no-nonsense voice, with its unsparing intelligence and utter lack of sentimentality, is what makes Mina such a good writer. “It’s not a mental illness, she didn’t have secret daddy issues. When Margo speculates that youthful trauma and low self-esteem must have driven her mother to become a prostitute, her aunt hoots in derision. Here, it’s society’s indifference to the sordid lives and lonely deaths of people like Margo’s mother. Mina tends to wrap her stories around politically incisive subplots. Lurid newspaper accounts and a popular true-crime book aren’t all that helpful to her search, and threatening letters hand-delivered in the dead of night to frighten her away from her mission lend little encouragement. ![]() Margo Dunlop, a doctor who was adopted as an infant, discovers that back in 1989, her birth mother was one of nine sex workers killed in Glasgow - and becomes determined to put a face to the murderer. In THE LESS DEAD (Mulholland, 341 pp., $28), these are drug addicts, prostitutes and other people who are barely missed and rarely mourned. ![]() ![]() Forget the killer - it’s the victims who matter to Denise Mina. ![]()
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