At once wry and shocking, humane and raw, ironic and visceral, Denise Mina brings a distinctive new voice to crime fiction in this gritty, award-winning debut novel set in the grim precincts of Glasgow's Garnethill. There the unlucky Maureen O'Donnell wakes up one fuzzy-headed morning to discover her therapist-boyfriend in the middle of the living room, tied to one of her kitchen chairs, with his throat slit clean through.

Recently recovered from a breakdown, Maureen now finds herself the prime suspect in a grisly murder case. Harassed by the police and hounded by the press, she sets out to reconstruct her dead lover's last days and uncovers a dire trail of rape, deception, and suppressed scandal at a local psychiatric hospital. When a second mutilated corpse surfaces, she realizes hers could be the third. It's time for Maureen to get lucky.