I enjoyed the story for the most part, despite my frustration with the main character’s refusal to be honest. And given what I’ve learned so far, i just can’t understand it. I enjoyed the inclusion of a podcast as part of the story, but even that is a little ridiculous. It would be the shortest podcast ever made, and for what purpose? Maybe it gets explained later, which would make it worthwhile. She left school at sixteen and did a number of poorly paid jobs, including working in a meat factory, as a bar maid, kitchen porter and cook. I do not believe in spirit possession but you know what, if someone were to tell me that in the middle of writing this book, the author, for whatever reason, got possessed by some otherworldly entity and wrote the rest of the book, I would have totally consider that possibility. Because that would have at least explained how a book that has started so well and completely unputdownable for the entire first half has managed to missed every opportunity to deliver even a tiny bit of satisfying conclusion/reveal. So many things were just so laughable and at certain point it ceased to be funny. *sigh*

Not a single word is wasted in this beautifully written novel. Unsettling, evocative and staggeringly good, it is possibly Mina's finest achievement" * Daily Express *

Customer reviews

The father of the house, William Watt, was five hours drive away, on a fly fishing holiday but police still suspect him. Watt was odd. He had taken the guard dog with him, which he never did. He established his alibi like a man trying to establish an alibi. William Watt was accused of the murders and sent to prison for three months. The use of social media is also very cleverly interwoven into Anna’s exposure but also as a means to find out what happened on the Dana - the subject of the podcast Anna initially listens to at home. Though the book was reasonably realistic at the beginning, the unrealistic plot twists got worse and worse the longer it went on. Are we really to believe that Sophie, missing for ten years - with an open police search for her- would be able to get seamlessly out of the UK? That she had somehow gotten married and mothered two children under another living person’s REAL name and ID and that was never found out? That upon her resurfacing on the podcast police wouldn’t immediately come after her? That you could commit a MURDER on an Italian passenger train which had cameras in every wagon without being stopped somehow? By the time we get to the bakery in Lyon and hear Sabina, who we had not met at all previously, sobbing over a suddenly terminally ill Emilia and mailing photos of bread to the prison every day, I genuinely considered not continuing. Don’t even get me started on the ending, it was too much of a mess to even comment on. It is a beautifully written book, a masterpiece by the woman who may be Britain's finest living crime novelist" * Daily Telegraph * Girolamo Savonarola was a Dominican friar living in Florence at the tail end of the fifteenth century. An anti-corruption campaigner his hellfire preaching increasingly spilled over into tirades against all luxuries that tempted people towards sin. These sermons led to the infamous ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ - a series of fires lit throughout Florence for the incineration of everything from books, extravagant clothing, playing cards, musical instruments, make-up and mirrors, to paintings, tapestries and sculptures.

Left alone in the big dark house, she can’t deal, she can’t think, she can’t take it in. Her safe, predictable world is shattered and Anna does what she always does: distracts herself with a story. A true crime podcast this time. It’s a compelling one. There’s a sunken yacht in the Mediterranean, multiple murders and a hint of power and corruption. Then Anna realizes that she knew one of the victims a long time ago, in another life. Her past, so carefully hidden until now, will no longer stay silent. But she’s convinced she knows what happened. This is a murder mystery that she can’t ignore. Conviction as a whole put me in mind of the Latin “Post Hoc, Ergo, Propter Hoc” – After, Therefore, Because of it – events and connections all underneath it all. I loved it because it challenged me, I really didn’t know where it was going to end up.

BookBrowse Review

Conviction is a wholly different type of novel in the suspense genre. My favorite parts of this book are the interactions between the characters (Anna, Fin and another character named Adam) v. the chapters featuring the actual podcasts (which I think are on the slower side). What I find intriguing is how the author, Denise Mina, intertwines the storylines – which at first, seem quite impossible and then, well, are absolutely seamless.