Paddy Meehan is dreading them finding out. Her family assume that her dogsbody job at the Scottish Daily News is a stop gap between leaving school and her big Catholic wedding to Sean Ogivly, but Paddy lies in bed at night, tracing the patterns in the artexed ceiling and dreams of being a journalist, wearing smart suits and carving a place for herself among the boozy, broken-hearted idealists she fetches and carries for.

Brian Wilcox's story is consuming the city. The toddler is missing, snatched from the front garden on a busy street when his mother nipped inside to answer the phone. Glasgow braces itself for the revelation of a lone sexual predator but the police are lead to a far darker conclusion as two young boys are implicated in the crime. Everyone at the Daily News is content to believe that the boys acted alone. Only Paddy feels certain that there was an adult hand in the murder and her thirst to find it deepens when she discovers that one of the boys is a distant relation.

Unsure whether she is motivated by personal ambition or social concern, Paddy tries to uncover the truth. She realises, too late, that her actions have invited a savage havoc into her own life and could lead to a catastrophic injustice as well as professional suicide.

Set in Glasgow in 1981, a time shaped by betrayal and conflict, when hunger strikes, riots and unemployment decimated the old industrial heartlands, The Field of Blood is the first in a new crime series tracing the life and career of Paddy Meehan, through the momentous events of the nineteen eighties, nineties and beyond. Infused with Minaís unique blend of dark humour, personal insights, true crime, and the social injustices that pervade our society, this is a novel that will grip and challenging our perceptions of childhood innocence, crime and punishment, right and wrong.

THE FIELD OF BLOOD by Denise Mina

The Field of Blood is the first in the Paddy Meehan series. The five books in the series fit together into a biog of Paddy as she moves through the newspaper industry during the turbulent eighties and nineties, carving a place for herself.

The Field of Blood is named after the field that Judas Iscariot bought with the thirty pieces of silver he won by betraying Jesus. Paddy's whole career and ambitions are a betrayal of her family and everyone she loves and her independence is built on that betrayal and the dilemma all woman feel, whether to be true to themselves or those people they love.