SLIP OF THE KNIFE
Denise Mina
Little, Brown and Company
Thriller
ISBN: 9780316015585

Terry Patterson is kidnapped, stripped naked and then executed on a dark night in a dark place. He has no idea why he’s been shoved into the trunk of a car by a man he doesn’t know, who certainly “has plans” of his own for him. “Assassins depend on…hope…it was the assassin’s accomplice,” but Terry couldn’t help but try to plan his escape. He didn’t have a chance: “he didn’t feel the muzzle on his temple because it wasn’t touching [and] he didn’t feel the cold metal crack of the pistol shot.” His body was found in a “ditch by the side of the road [where] his corpse splashed into a trickling stream.”

Terry is a former reporter who had left the local scene years ago to work as a photojournalist. He focuses his camera on the faces and landscapes of war-torn countries as he chronicles the death of nations and their people. Upon his return home, he and writer Kevin Hatcher collaborates on a ‘“big book’ of glossy photos and text.” They have a publisher and a contract and are out on the town celebrating when Terry is snatched from outside his front door. Could it have been some kind of retribution for something he published or caught on a picture he took? Could this slaying have been an assassination by the IRA? After all, his body was found “on the Stranraer road [where] the ferry to Belfast” [takes off.]

One of the first people notified about the killing is Paddy Meehan, a journalist who had gained minor celebrity when she had written a story years ago about one of the most horrific child murders in 20 years. Cullum Olgivy and another boy had been convicted of conspiracy. The demons that egged them on were caught and received more serious sentences. At the time the murder occurred, Paddy was set to marry Sean, Olgivy’s cousin. Now, Cullum was getting out of jail and needed a place to stay. Circumstances made it clear that, at least for a little while, he was going to be Paddy’s guest. This frightened her and made her uncomfortable on several levels, not the least of which was the fact that she has a five-year-old son.

But Paddy is a veteran reporter from the “old school” of devoted journalists for whom the story comes first. She is the author of a true-crime book and has earned herself a column called “Misty.” She has the respect of her colleagues and is known for her anger, salty language, honesty, tenaciousness, talent, humanity and fairness. She is older and wiser than when she began work years ago as a copyboy. She has had her share of personal grief and yet maintains a healthy level of optimism. Her family and friends also have changed over the course of the series, and this adds verisimilitude to the characters.

One evening, when Paddy, her flat mate Dub and her son are home watching television, a steady knock of a certain timbre --- “rhythmic, steady…slow and steady” --- echoes through Paddy’s apartment. “She had shadowed the police often enough to know what a death knock looked like: two uniformed officers, stony faced, one of them a woman, turning up at an unexpected hour. Someone close to her had died. They had died violently.” When told of Terry’s death, Paddy couldn’t take it in. All of the usual questions and emotions of shock rush through her being.

As soon as she gathers her thoughts, Paddy confronts her editor and insists that she be given the scoop and allowed to handle the exclusive. He agrees to let her write the story that first day. But Terry’s murder didn’t happen in a vacuum, and as the body count rises, Paddy finds herself lost in a maze of coincidences and danger. When she learns that Terry left his papers and a small cottage to her in his will, she is determined to find his killer. Then her son Pete is threatened and Terry’s collaborator is murdered. As soon as Paddy makes sure that Pete is safe, she steels herself to face whatever danger or impediment she encounters in her quest to solve the case. But why do the police seem not to want this case to just go away?

SLIP OF THE KNIFE is a riveting and complex book with several subplots and an interesting cast of characters. Denise Mina has developed “personalities” as opposed to cut-out players. She limns them fully, and as each one acts out her/his role in the story, readers can form images of them from their description and actions. As always, Mina uses her words carefully, in a decisive and commanding manner. Her plots have always been “tricky” in that the reader is drawn into the backstory of each event. SLIP OF THE KNIFE is another gem in Mina’s body of work. Here, as in the past, she carries the show with panache and chutzpah.

    --- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum

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