Sanctum - Hardcover

Mina, Denise

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593046579 ISBN 13: 9780593046579

Publisher: Bantam Press, 2002

Synopsis

Why do some women find criminals irresistible? Why do some marry convicted murderers while they are in prison? These are some of the issues Denise Mina addresses in her fourth thought-provoking novel which combines acute psychological insights with great writing and a page-turning narrative. Set in a prison in the north of Scotland, So Special is narrated by a doctor who is awaiting trial on a highly publicised murder charge. Why, the papers speculate, has this doctor killed convicted serial killer, Wayne McManus? What makes him so special, when she has worked with prisoners like him for eight years? Did he tell her something so terrible that she felt bound to take the law into her own hands? The truth - as always - is rather more complicated, and involves another woman who has been writing love letters to Wayne, and who eventually marries him in prison. And then the murders start; murders which involve details never publicly released, and which were known only to Wayne and the police...

About this title

About the Author

Denise Mina was born in 1966 in Glasgow. She worked as an auxiliary nurse in geriatric and terminal care nursing homes before studying law at Glasgow University. As an academic researcher she has written extensively on the medicalization of deviant women, and until recently she taught Criminology and Criminal Law. She lives in Glasgow, where she now writes full time. She is the author of three novels, Garnethill, which won the John Creasey Award for Best First Crime Novel, Exile, and Resolution.

From the Back Cover

Lachlan Harriot is in a state of shock. His wife Susie has been convicted of the murder of serial killer Andrew Gow, a prisoner in her care. Unless Harriot can come up with grounds for an appeal in two weeks' time, Susie will be given a life sentence, depriving her of her home, her family and her two-year-old daughter.

Harriot is convinced that his wife, a respected forensic psychiatrist, is innocent, and each night climbs the stairs to Susie's study where he goes through her papers, laboriously transcribing onto his computer her case notes, her interviews with Gow and his new wife Donna, and the press cuttings from the trial. But his search for the truth soon raises more questions than answers.

Why had Susie stolen a set of prison files and then lied about it? What was the precise nature of her relationship with Gow? And, most importantly, what is it in her study that she doesn't want her husband to find? As the documents on Harriot's computer begin to multiply, his perception of what really happened between Gow and Susie becomes ever more complex. But first he must decide what he's to do with a discovery that involves violence, sexual obsession, lust and ultimate betrayal.

In her first stand-alone novel following her acclaimed Garnethill trilogy, Denise Mina looks at the shifting sands that separate fact and fiction, perception and reality, responsibility and culpability. Sanctum is a powerful psychological portrait of people living on the edge, an account of the deals with the devil that lie beneath their apparent respectability, and the terrifying journeys they are prepared to make in order to survive.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593046579
• ISBN 13: 9780593046579
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304