The Field of Blood

Title: The Field of Blood
Author: Denise Mina
Publisher: Bantam Books 2005

Finally, I finished reading this book. The story is about two Paddy Meehans, one is an old man who had been wrongly convicted of a crime he didn't commit and locked up in the jail for decades; another is a young girl working at a news paper as a copyboy, but is inspired to become a real journalist.

The two lines are interwined with each other, but I have no clue why the two are linked, other than both are from the Scottish city of Glasgow, a city deeply divided between Catholics and Protestants.

The plot is not too bad, other than the redundancy of the old Paddy Meehan part. The story about the young Paddy Meehan started with the murder of a baby called Brian. Paddy's finacee's cousin is one of the two boys being accused of killing baby Brian. Young Paddy Meehan started her own investigation, uncovering the details bit by bit, then finally exposing the real murderer, the one who murdered another baby Thomas Dempsie 10 years ago.

The author's lips are tight. She didn't drop any obvious hints or tips till the very last few pages when the true killer surfaced.

However, this book is a bit grey or even dark. In many occasions, the author depicted the fall of the Scottish industries. Factories were closing down one by one, workers were laid off. In addition, the tough parts of the city. All these give the readers a depressing impression of a new modern city slump.

And then people's attitudes towards religion. The young Paddy Meehan, only went to mass to please his parents, although she didn't have the least faith in the religion. She confessed she lied from the very first time she received the communion.

The society depicted is so suffocating.