丹尼斯·米娜

丹尼斯·米娜（英语：Denise Mina，1966年8月21日—）是一位苏格兰犯罪小说家和剧作家，以《嘉纳丘》（Garnethill）三部曲出名，并塑造了格拉斯哥记者Paddy Mehan的形象。亦曾写作第十三部《地狱神探》。

她的第一部Paddy Mehan小说《血之地》（The Field of Blood）在2011年被BBC拍成电视剧播出。 第二部《The Dead Hour》在2013年播出。

生平

丹尼尔·米娜在1966年出生于格拉斯哥，父亲是工程师。由于父亲工作的缘故，全家在18年间共搬了21次家。所到之处包括巴黎、海牙、伦敦、卑尔根。16岁米娜辍学开始工作，先后做过酒吧女招待、服务员和厨师，亦曾在肉类加工厂上班。20岁返回学校之前还曾做过老年护理，之后进入格拉斯哥大学获得法学学位。

1990年代在斯特拉斯克莱德大学教授犯罪学和犯罪法，并开始决定写作《嘉纳丘》，1998年第一部书出版。

Denise Mina (born 21 August 1966) is a Scottish writer active since 1996. Her debut novel Garnethill (1998 Transworld) was a bestseller and won the Crime Writers' Association John Creasey Award for best debut. It was followed by Exile and Resolution, completing a trilogy of novels featuring Maureen O’Donnell, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.

Described as ‘crime writing royalty’ by Val McDermid, she was a key figure in the rise of Tartan Noir. Conviction (2019) was a Reese's Book Club Pick.

Her latest novel, The Good Liar (2025) examines forensic junk science and the implications for justice.

She is best known for her crime novels and short stories. Her non-fiction novel, The Long Drop, was about serial killer Peter Manuel's trial in Glasgow 1958. She also writes graphic novels, wrote ‘Hellblazer’ for a year, is a playwright and regularly presents television and radio.

Biography

Denise Mina was born in East Kilbride in 1966. Her father worked as an engineer.

After serving in the Merchant Navy, her father worked as a draughtsman in the oil industry. During the North Sea Oil boom of the 1970s and ’80s the family lived in Paris, London, The Hague, Bergen and Invergordon.

Her education was erratic; the family moved often, and she changed schools thirteen times. At sixteen, she attended Orpington College but dropped out.

She worked in bars, a cinema, a meat factory and as an auxiliary nurse in several nursing homes in Bromley and Beckenham, South London.

After a brief spell in Galway, she moved to Glasgow and attended Langside HE College.

Career

She graduated from Glasgow University with an LLB (Hons) in Law where she was awarded the Gilbert Forbes Medal for forensic science.

She began a PhD at Strathclyde University Law School on The Ascription of Mental Illness to Female Offenders where she wrote her first novel Garnethill (1998). The trilogy was completed by Exile (2000) and Resolution (2001). Mina's first Paddy Meehan novel, The Field of Blood (2005), was filmed for broadcast in 2011 by the BBC, starring Jayd Johnson, Peter Capaldi and David Morrissey.

She is known for her work across crime fiction, theatre, television, and documentary filmmaking.

In August 2025, Mina was a guest on the Off the Shelf Podcast as part of a feature on the McIlvanney Prize.

Plays

She was an early contributor to the radical Oran Mor ‘A Play, A Pie and A Pint’ series of new and experimental theatre under David McLennan. Her first play there, Ida Tamson (2006, based on the short story of the same name published in The Evening Times for the Aye Write Festival), starred Elaine C Smith and was directed by Morag Fullerton.

The play was revived for a second run in 2019 to celebrated twenty years of PPP at Oran Mor.

Her play Peter Manuel: Meet Me (2013) depicted the night serial killer Peter Manuel spent drinking with the man whose family he murdered.

Her credits include Mrs Puntila and Her Man Matti, her 2020 gender-switched adaptation of Brecht's play Mr Puntila and His Man Matti staged at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh. Directed by Murat Daltaban of Istanbul's DOT Theatre, it featured Elaine C. Smith and Steven McNicoll in the lead roles.

Literary judging panels

She has served as a judge for several literary awards, including the John Creasey Prize in 1999 and 2000, the Gillian Purvis Award in 2004, and the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2014. From 2015 to 2021, she chaired the Board of Trustees for the Glasgow Film Theatre.

TV presenting

In television, she has written and presented documentaries such as Poe's Women for BBC4 and Skinner and Mina's Literary Road Trip for Sky Arts, which examined the relationships between literary figures including Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift.

Short films

Her 2012 short film Multum in Parvo, screened at the Sheffield Documentary Festival, combined interviews with her mother and siblings about their childhood in Rutherglen with footage of the family watching the film together at the Glasgow Film Theatre.