The Long Drop

By Denise Mina,

Book cover of The Long Drop

Book description

'A masterpiece by the woman who may be Britain's finest living crime novelist' Daily Telegraph

'Absorbing... this is a bravura performance, a true original' Ian Rankin

Glasgow, 1957. It is a December night and William Watt is desperate. His family has been murdered and he needs to find out who…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked The Long Drop as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The Long Drop is a Scottish crime book like no other. 

It features an imagined night featuring two key figures in the terrible world of one of Scotland’s most notorious murderers Peter Manuel.

In this long night of the soul Peter Manuel and William Watt wander through Glasgow and its underbelly as Manuel leads Watt on a journey of lies, drink, and trickery.

It is Tartan Noir at its most terrifying. A Jekyll and Hyde story of a night based on true events.

From Lin's list on Tartan Noir and Bloody Scotland.

An accomplished author of imaginative thrillers and police procedurals, Mina here draws on the actual case of 1950s Scottish mass murderer Peter Manuel and conjures up a complex fictional context that transforms the factual account into noir art (2017). Her gritty pre-urban renewal Glasgow demonstrates how a story’s setting can be as vivid and determinant as its human characters. Running nearly the length of its lean narrative is a murder trial that throws a harsh light on conflicting strata of the city’s brutally misogynistic society, from its corrupt business elite to its grimy criminal underbelly. When the drama is over…

From W.A.'s list on crime stories of the past 50 years.

The Midnight Man

By Julie Anderson,

Book cover of The Midnight Man

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Julie Anderson Author Of The Midnight Man

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Why am I passionate about this?

I write historical crime fiction, and my latest novel is set in a hospital, a real place, now closed. The South London Hospital for Women and Children (1912–1985) was set up by pioneering suffragists and women surgeons Maud Chadburn and Eleanor Davies-Colley (the first woman admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons) and I recreate the now almost-forgotten hospital in my book. Events take place in 1946 when wartime trauma still impacts upon a society exhausted by conflict, and my book choices also reflect this.

Julie's book list on evocative stories set in a hospital

What is my book about?

A historical thriller set in south London just after World War II, as Britain returns to civilian life and the men return home from the fight, causing the women to leave their wartime roles. The South London Hospital for Women and Children is a hospital, (based on a real place) run by women for women and must make adjustments of its own. As austerity bites, the coldest Winter then on record makes life grim. Then a young nurse goes missing.

Days later, her body is found behind a locked door, and two women from the hospital, unimpressed by the police…

The Midnight Man

By Julie Anderson,

What is this book about?

BEWARE THE DARKNESS BENEATH

Winter 1946

One cold dark night, as a devastated London shivers through the transition to post-war life, a young nurse goes missing from the South London Hospital for Women & Children. Her body is discovered hours later behind a locked door.

Two women from the hospital join forces to investigate the case. Determined not to return to the futures laid out for them before the war, the unlikely sleuths must face their own demons and dilemmas as they pursue - The Midnight Man.

‘A mystery that evokes the period – and a recovering London – in…


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