Even hardened crime fiction fans can find Denise Mina hard to take. The language, the violence, the psychological disturbance - too deep a descent into the darkness for some people. The Less Dead might be an example of this. Briefly, the central character is Margo, a doctor, who was adopted as a baby. She goes in search of her birth mother and discovers that she was a sex worker who was murdered, one of a series of women murdered in Glasgow at that time. The killer has never been found.
In her ‘Acknowledgments’ at the end of the book Mina thanks various people who have helped in her research. As the narrative unfolds it is obvious that she has engaged with many of the issues that surround sex work, not least the negative attitudes of society in general to the women involved. The work is never commended but the lack of compassion for those who feel driven to the work and are constantly vulnerable to physical abuse and sometimes murder is highlighted and challenged. The title of the book is a description apparently used by police to describe sex workers. Nikki, who turns out to be Margo’s aunt, says: ‘When we get killed they call us the “less dead”, like we were never really alive to begin with.’
It’s a powerful book focussing not just on the ‘issue’ but on the conditions that drive women to this lifestyle and the dangers they face when involved. Sometimes it does feel more like a polemic than a narrative, and at least one critic I have read recently, is not happy with the tendency of some crime novelists to use their work to ride their hobby horses. I take this point but if you have a deeply felt concern and you are gifted as a storyteller then this can be a powerful medium to alert others to things that need to be exposed and changed. Ian Rankin has recently written:
‘While I have written in a variety of genres, I continue to find the crime novel the perfect vehicle for a discussion of contemporary issues in the most unflinching terms. After all, the detective has an ‘all areas pass’ to every aspect of the contemporary urban sene, and this is the way for the crime writer to take the reader into forbidden territory . . .’
The he danger for the writer is that the ‘contemporary issues’ can dominate to the detriment of the narrative thus affecting the reader’s engagement. But I have to say I am grateful for the experience of reading The Less Dead. Great plotting, well-drawn characters, some brilliant turns of phrase and it took me into that ‘forbidden territory’ which exists beyond the novel.
Thoughts of the Incarnation of Jesus were never far away. The apostle John tells us that ‘The Word became flesh’, not in an sanitised, uncomplicated world. In the Israel of Jesus’ day women sold sex, tax collectors swindled the poor, wrongdoers could be stoned to death or nailed to a cross. John writes: ‘The Word became flesh and lived among us.’ (John 1: 14) Among us! The original Greek of those words can be translated: ‘The Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.’ Jesus never excluded himself from any area of society, even that inhabited by ‘the less dead.’ The religious establishment of his day were scandalised by his keeping company with the sex workers of his day. They could not grasp that to find the lost sheep you have to search, to raise the fallen you have to get alongside, to heal you have to reach out.
The Less Dead has no one that might be described as a conventional ‘hero.’ But there are women who may have made self-destructive choices in their past but who have a deep inner strength. This has enabled them to endure violence, addiction, injustice, rejection, and yet still to care for others who have fallen into the darkness they have known. God is a faint echo in the world of this book but we are drawn into the world of individual women and men, human beings who Scripture tells us are created in the image of God. Someone has said that no matter their moral and spiritual condition His fingerprints are on their lives, shown in those things said and done that enhance the lives of others and strengthens community. And according to the teaching of Jesus no one falls out of the loving focus of God. In a recent interview Denise Mina describes herself as ‘a hopeful person’ and that this is her personal choice. She doesn’t go into the reasons for her hopefulness. But I can hope because of the love shown to the world in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It was his destiny, in the words of Isaiah, to be ‘despised, and . . . held in low esteem’ (Isaiah 53: 3) He was among the ‘less dead’ of his day. But the forgiveness that flows from his death and the renewal promised in his resurrection has given us a strong foundation for hope.
