Jessica Woodbury's Reviews > Conviction

I recommend Denise Mina a lot to people who are looking for a strong, reliable crime author to add to their reading. CONVICTION is a strong standalone with a tough female protagonist and a super twisty European spree of a plot, I think it's a good place to start if you haven't read her before.

At the beginning of the book, it looks to the reader like Anna is at a low point. All she wants to do is listen to this true crime podcast and then she gets some very bad news. You'd think Anna is at a low point but it turns out she's had it much lower. Right off the bat we know that Anna is not quite who she says she is, and a lot of the journey of the first half of the book is actually two journeys: Anna's dive into the podcast, which details the death of a man she knew years ago; and our gradual discovery of who Anna actually is.

This kind of layering goes on throughout the book, even when we know Anna's full identity, and just about everything is wrapped up in double-ness and mirroring. (The more I think about it, even more examples are piling up.) This is a book about having two identities, about hiding in plain sight, about the difference between what people see of you and who you actually are. This is all true of Anna, of course, but it also applies to her companion on this journey, Finn, a famous musician with an eating disorder, and Gretchen, the ultra-rich villain Anna suspects is behind everything.

It's also a book where we get to dive into crime podcast culture. I kept trying to get a read on what the book was trying to say about it and ultimately I don't think it's saying one thing, it's saying about 50 things at once. On one page it calls out amateur sleuths, on the next it uses the work of amateur sleuths to solve a murder. You could say the book wants to have its cake and eat it, too when it comes to this subject. Or you could say that it is happy to see the layman's obsession with true crime as a complicated thing that isn't easy to pin down.

I enjoyed Anna a lot, even as you learn more about her it doesn't really mean you get to know her better. She is fully herself from the first page, you just get to see the reasons for it as you go. The pacing was excellent, it has the twists of a thriller without making things move so fast that you feel jerked around.

I listened to the audiobook. In the past I've been frustrated when Mina's books get narrators with English accents instead of Scottish (her books are almost entirely set in Scotland, much of this one is too) and this time I was pleased to have a Scottish reader who has to use a whole pile of accents over the course of the book and does them all splendidly.

Update: did a re-read before reading the newly released second book, CONFIDENCE, and absolutely enjoyed every minute. Excited to get back to Anna again. It definitely can't hurt to do a reread of this one, I honestly could not remember who all these people were and I'm glad I got the reminder.