Garnethill

Maureen O'Donnell is a psychiatric patient, stuck in an affair with Douglas, a shady therapist. She’s about to end it with him when she wakes up one morning to find him in her living room with his throat slit. Viewed by the police as both a suspect and a witness, even Maureen’s family suspects her. Panic-stricken, she retraces Douglas' last days, finding a trail of rape and deception at a psychiatric hospital where she’d been an inmate. The patients won't talk and staff are afraid. Then a second brutalised corpse is discovered and Maureen realises that her life is in danger.

The last time Maureen O'Donnell saw Ann Harris, she was nursing a couple of broken ribs and reeking of alcohol at the women's shelter. Now Ann has turned up dead hundreds of miles away, in London. Eager to escape some family difficulties of her own, Maureen travels to London to determine the circumstances of Ann's brutal death. In the seedy underworld of criminal exiles and dangerous drug lords, Maureen tries to piece together the horror of Ann's last days - and to save herself from a similarly ugly fate.

Maureen O'Donnell is facing the darkest episode in her life. She owes more than she makes in a year in back taxes; Angus Farrell, the psychologist who murdered her boyfriend, is up for trial; and her abusive father has arrived back in Glasgow. On top of it all, she has become embroiled in someone else's family feud. Ella McGee, an elderly stallholder at the fleamarket where Maureen is selling illegally imported cigarettes, is bringing a case against her son in the small claims court.