Following on from Field of Blood,
Denise Mina’s The Dead Hour is a mystery with the rather unlikely lead
character of Paddy Mehan, a junior journalist at a Glasgow newspaper.  Mehan’s
job is to cover police incidents at night, being driven around in a reporting
car, and interviewing anyone who will talk.  She stays up all night and sleeps
at home during the day.  Now she is the only wage earner at home, while the
rest of her family collects unemployment benefit.  It is 1984, and many people
are losing their jobs.  Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister, and the unions
have lost much of their former power.  Her mother is worried that Paddy will
never marry now that her engagement to Sean has been broken off, but Paddy is
exploring her new freedom.  In the male dominated world of newspapers, she is
determined to succeed. 

One night Paddy follows a police
call to a house where neighbors have complained about a couple arguing.  She
goes to the door and sees a woman with a bloody face in the background, but the
man inside who speaks to her hands her money and closes the door, telling her
not to report the event.  She is troubled because she should not accept a bribe
to keep quiet, so she writes up the incident anyway for the morning newspaper. 
But when she wakes up the next day, she finds that the woman, Vhari Burnett,
was murdered.  She thinks back and remembers the look of fear on the woman’s
face.

Early on in the book, we are also
introduced to Kate, who is addicted to cocaine, and has stolen a large bag of
the white powder.  So it looks like Vhari’s murder is connected to drugs, but
we don’t know how.  As the plot unfolds, the details become clearer.  There are
no great surprises, but the story is well constructed.

The great strength of Mina’s
writing is her awareness of British class and gender placed in the political
context of declining industry and right wing ideology.  Paddy tries to do what
she can for her family, but at the same time she wants her independence.  She
may be overweight and lacking in fashionable clothes, but she has a great deal
of determination to overcome the obstacles placed in her way by society.  Mina
does so well at describing the power dynamics when older men are faced by this
younger woman.  A satisfying read.

© 2006 Christian Perring. All
rights reserved.

Christian
Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts & Humanities
Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island. He is also editor of Metapsychology Online Reviews.  His main
research is on philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: Fiction