Guaranteed to keep you invested by incorporating fact, myth and legend

This series has already produced two works of note and distinction. It raises the question – if a country cannot re-tell its history, will it be stuck forever in aspic and condemned to be nothing more than a shortbread tin illustration? Hex and Rizzio are showing the way towards a reckoning, and about time too

Denise Mina is a name to be taken very seriously when it comes to crime fiction. …. Mary is a heroine tailor-made for [her] expert literary investigation

May be Britain's finest living crime novelist

contains more suspense and action than many a doorstopper of a historical thriller ... Written in a style allowing access to multiple characters’ thoughts, rich with cinema-sharp imagery, "Rizzio" is a tour de force work of art

[Rizzio] is retold in Mina’s characteristically compelling style which brings the intrigue and machinations of a key moment in Scottish history vibrantly to life

a writer of huge skill and inventiveness who blends tense, well-crafted crime fiction with social conscience and historical weight

Bestseller Mina vividly recreates a gruesome episode from the Tudor era in this searing novella set mostly over the course of a single day, Mar. 9, 1566. Mina interjects well-wrought characterizations; this superior historical thriller reads like a real-life episode of Game of Thrones

This is an edgy, provocative and thrilling classic in the making

it's apt that Mina should embrace the short form novella, encapsulating the darkness and drama yet somehow managing to keep it light and at times funny

it is refreshing to be presented with a very readable, if embellished, account of Rizzio's murder and some of its implications for Scotland

Denise Mina applies a true crime lens to revisit 24 hours that transformed the monarchy and it’s absolutely riveting

Riveting ... darkly clever

Stabby and pithy ... an intriguing sketch in blood

an electric and utterly absorbing battle of wills

An omniscient narrative voice, which delivers historical exposition in quick ironic bursts...Mina’s vivid style and the swift-moving plot are a pleasure. More historical fiction, please Ms Mina

This riveting novella retells the intrigue behind [Rizzio's] death

I gobbled up Denise Mina’s short and immersive Rizzio – a fictionalised account of the murder of Mary Queen of Scots’s private secretary in 16th-century Holyrood – as an audiobook on a single long car journey

In Rizzio she has created a plus-sized novella with the passion of an opera, a tour de force of imaginative reconstruction

The tragic episode is retold in Mina’s characteristically compelling style, which brings the intrigue and machinations of a key moment in Scottish history to life

I had an absolute thrill-ride reading your book ... … what you manage to do with this is quite dazzling… you manage to present a feminist, female perspective on her [Mary Queen of Scot’s] dilmena and her intelligence and a couple of the other women there too…absolutely incredible… your prose is beautiful, the dialogue drawn from historical record. Another brilliant book. Congratulations

Mina, a contemporary crime novelist, retells this famous tale with great panache and gives it both a touch of noir and a blackly comic edge... gripping

Mina's real genius is to draw out the private feelings of [her] protagonists with such economy, in a short, pacey but incredibly tender account…Making her tale all the more vivid is Edinburgh itself…[the tale] seems fresh in her retelling

The writing is spellbinding and simply draws one in ... Outstanding

Set in one day it really is a fabulously, engaging and moving read. Anybody with an interest in history,  crime –  anything Scottish – would love it

Mina does an excellent job of grabbing the reader’s attention and transporting them to that horrible night ... If you love reading about Mary, Queen of Scots, and Stuart Scotland during the 16th century, you will find “Rizzio” by Denise Mina thrilling

Denise Mina brilliantly manages to be funny, heart-wrenching, gut-punching and addictive all at once

a novella designed to be devoured in one sitting

Written in tight, present-tense prose, Rizzio peers over the shoulders and into the minds of conspirators, loyalists, pawns, and victims as the titular assassination of Rizzio and the attempted overthrow of the queen unfolds… a gut-punch of a novella

This is a book to rival many an acknowledged masterpiece.

Denise Mina is at the helm of a pithier, pocket-sized revolution: the historical novella

Mina explores this bloody incident with forensic and gripping detail ... written in a taut detective-story style, with flashes of modern wit

I love the idea — drinking in historical fiction as a series of shots

Rizzio is a fiery account of an ancient tale, a snapshot of the 16th century brought vividly to a 21st century audience