...a critique of the culture that noir so effectively portrays ... Her focus on the fate of Glasgow’s women is one of the most compelling aspects of the book, in its resonance with our own time as well as in her critique of the role of women in the noir genre ... The Long Drop is an indictment of the brutal and masculine world of noir. Mina contrasts this world with her portrait of the role of women in her story and in the culture, a portrait that is in the background of the narrative but at the center of the novel’s impact ... Manuel’s story, in Mina’s hands, overlays those horrors on our own world of ordinary horrors and of a male ego that so fully demands compliance that truth and conscience and empathy are abandoned.

Mina has always been a close observer of the brutality drunkards can inflict on their wives and children. But she also feels for women like Manuel’s mother, Brigit, and the father of a murdered girl who describes her in the blandest of terms on the witness stand because he can’t bring himself to share his memories of the 'real daughter' the public knows only as a mangled corpse. Mina even holds out her hand to those inarticulate thugs whose violent acts are a perverse way of validating their own lives ... With one plotline continually hopscotching over the other, Mina manages to keep two narratives going at once: the farcical account of Watt and Manuel’s binge and the sober courtroom drama of dueling life-or-death stories when Manuel faces a jury. Despite the novel’s final reassurance that it’s 'just a story. Just a creepy story about a serial killer,' this one feels painfully real.

It’s hard to top that macabre pub-crawl around Glasgow for drama, but Mina has plenty of other provocative historical material here to flesh out — including the transcripts of Manuel’s murder trial that took place the following year ... the narrator of The Long Drop sees far beyond the daily grime and grisly events of the late 1950s and, yet, mostly keeps mum, leaving readers to stumble with detectives through the fug of half-truths and lies that enshroud the story of Peter Manuel and his patsy or prey or possible partner in crime, William Watt. The Long Drop takes readers on a suspenseful tour into the past, through psyches and situations far grimmer than even those sooty Glasgow streets.

This 'shadow city' she peoples with real figures from the time, including the razor thug Billy Fullerton and crime boss Dandy McKay, relishing the creative act of putting flesh on their unlovely bones. The best three chapters in the book are told from the perspective of minor characters ... Curious that the inner life of Manuel himself does not receive such close imaginative recreation. Perhaps Mina considers him unknowable, or is unwilling to think herself into the murk of his head. Manuel wrote his name in blood across postwar Scotland. Mina’s attempt to trace that signature in ink is interesting but perhaps ultimately unnecessary. It was, in any case, indelible.

...[a] taut and shrewdly written period novel ... Despite this being a fiction turning on a real verdict already foretold, our interest never flags, thanks to the author’s keen eye and canny tongue for the telling detail, the revealing gesture, the phrase that says it all.

Neither of the two main characters are particularly likeable and it is grimly fascinating to sit in on their conversations. We follow them through a night of drinking together as they tour around Glasgow. There is a macabre quality as they dance around their own egos and desires. Watt stumbling through an ego-haze of alcohol and Manuel, devoid of empathy, unable to read his fellow man. Manuel is an arrogant psychopath; there’s no insight, no human connection. These are exquisitely drawn scenes and Mina’s prose pulls you in. It is spare, precise and frequently devastating ... The narration has an omniscient quality and it feels as if Mina is sitting us down to tell us the tale. Her style is wide-ranging and modern but not judgemental and the story is laid bare for us to judge. We all know that Mina does not lack talent and it is clear from the first few pages that she has rolled up her sleeves and is flexing her literary muscles. The Long Drop is an atmospheric dive into the menace and folly of men. It is a delicious evocation of some dark days with tone-perfect dialogue. This is a relatively short novel but, like a classy single malt, The Long Drop is one to savour.

Though somewhat unlike Mina’s usual thrillers in many ways, this study of a serial killer shares her persistent themes. Mina has penned three series of novels, each featuring a female protagonist struggling against both active criminals and pervasive misogyny. In this story she omits the female protagonist but remains grounded in the casual victimization of Scotland’s women ... A terrific exploration of crime and oppression.

...outstanding ... With knifelike precision, Mina flicks between the bizarre 12 hours Watt and Manuel spend together getting drunk in Glasgow bars, and Manuel’s later trial, where’s he’s on the dock not only for the murder of the Watt family but also the slaughter of another trio, asleep in their beds. The question of guilt or innocence is irrelevant, and the gray of the in-between reigns supreme. And while Mina’s usual tough female protagonists are absent, the presence of women presses as near as the crush of bodies eager to attend Manuel’s trial.