From Savonarola to Marlowe

With the publication of Garnethill twenty-five years ago, Scotland welcomed a major new literary talent. Denise Mina talks about her career in crime fiction, and two new novels taking their inspiration from history. Three Fires is her second book for Polygon, re-imagining the 15th century Bonfire of the Vanities, inspired by the fanatical Girolamo Savonarola. In The Second Murderer, she brings new life to Raymond Chandler’s flawed detective, Philip Marlowe, in a gritty thriller about a missing heiress.

This event will be chaired by Sam Baker.

• Saturday 23 September, 3pm
• Festival Marquee
• Tickets £12

About the author: Denise Mina is the author of the Garnethill trilogy, the Paddy Meehan series and the Alex Morrow series. She has won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award twice and was inducted into the Crime Writers Association Hall of Fame in 2014. The Long Drop won the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year in 2017, as well as the Gordon Burn Prize, and was named by The Times as one of the top ten crime novels of the decade. Conviction was the co-winner of the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year 2019, and selected for Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Book Club. Rizzio, her first book in the Darklands series, was Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month in February 2022, and longlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger.