Blood, Salt, Water (Alex Morrow)

by Denise Mina

Hardcover, 2015

Status

Available

Call number

823.914

Collection

Publication

HarperCollins Publishers (2015), 304 pages

Description

"A wealthy businesswoman disappears from her Glasgow home without a trace, leaving her husband and children panicked but strangely resistant to questioning. Tracing the woman's cell phone, police detective Alex Morrow discovers a call made from an unlikely location. A sleepy seaside community, Helensburgh is the last place you'd go looking for violence. But Morrow's investigation uncovers disturbing clues and a dead body in a nearby lake. When a connection to someone close to her surfaces, the case gets more personal than she could have imagined"--

User reviews

LibraryThing member NatalieSW
God I love this writer. Her stories and characters are like life — multi-layered, simultaneously or alternating between unexpected and predictable, likeable and appalling, and everything in between. And the writing—! She employs the whole range: raw, rough, smooth, mellifluous (she actually
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uses once the word "immellifluous," and it is, astonishingly, just the right word, right there), and beautiful. One sentence that contains "lazy notes of yesterday" — probably not quoted quite right; couldn't find it again — turned up, singular and perfect, in just the right place, at the right time, to make the reader experience it as the character does. "A pang of chemical regret"— what a knockout expression. And the description of a colleague Dickensianly named "Thankless" as "aggravatingly declamatory" made me laugh out loud. (And he is, too.)

I had trouble putting this down to go to sleep. First thing I picked up this morning, read till the end. Even read the acknowledgements, would have read the index if she'd included one.
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LibraryThing member BrianEWilliams
I did not finish this book, which is rare for me. It was disjointed and unfocused. I had no interest in seeing it through to the end. Also I found many if not all of the characters (including the protagonist) were annoying me, they were whiny. I'll skip this author.
LibraryThing member Carol420
Blood, Salt, Water by Denise Mina
Alex Marrow series
3★'s

I've read several other books by this author and even thought I have to say that i really enjoyed the book...it wasn't one of her best efforts. The story was choppy and the events just didn't fit together. The parts devoted to the
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investigation by Alex Morrow and the Glasgow Police were extremely well done. Alex could have well carried the entire storyline to completion. The side characters...while having been meant to weave the story together with the missing woman just fell short and became more of a distraction. I wish Denise Mina had taken the time to help us understand Morrow's obsession with the missing woman and to give us more closure on the woman's death. Actually I believe the final reveal had been done before in a previous book.
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LibraryThing member idiotgirl
As always. Very complex story as usual. A woman gone missing, involved in crimes that reach beyond Scotland. Another woman's body is found. Connected. A woman returns from America who has been gone for decades. Draws in several characters. One male character the novel follows is clearly implicated
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as murder in the case of second woman. Is he with the others. Another set of deaths when a pub ownder and daughter killed in fire at his business. Related? Morrows own personal life with twins and brother kept in the background of this story--no real direct presentation of these stories. But there. All comes together without too much drama. I really like Mina, who is from Glasgow. I like to listen on Audible because of very subtle reading with Glaswegian note.
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LibraryThing member BillPilgrim
DCI Alex Morrow investigates the disappearance of a woman who was being investigated for shady financial dealings. At the start of the book, a small town hoodlum recently release from prison kills an unidentified woman in a murder for hire crime. He is consumed by guilt over the killing, and we
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wonder for the first portion of the book whether this is the missing woman Morrow is looking for.

The author's plotting, writing and character development is of typical high quality. The small town in Scotland where most of the action takes place is wonderfully drawn
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LibraryThing member brangwinn
Mina brings empathy to this mystery. The reader feels sorry for the murderer, realizing that his past continued to impact him. As always the Alex Morrow novel is complex. This one brought closure to Alex and her brother in prison.
LibraryThing member AJBraithwaite
Love Denise Mina's writing: her metaphors manage to be so unexpected and yet so apt.
LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50
Blood Salt Water by Denise Mina is the fifth book in her Alex Morrow series. There hasn’t been a further entry in this series since this book was published in 2015 which leads me to believe that the author has moved on from this sequence. There was definitely a feeling of closure in this story.
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The actual plot was a combination of murder, fraud, drug dealing and blackmail.

There isn’t a lot of mystery involved in this story, we learn very quickly whodunnit so the plot becomes more about explaining the how and why of the various crimes and exactly who is connected to who. A wealthy businesswoman disappears from Glasgow and all traces of her lead to a small seaside town. Of course all is not as it seems on the surface as the businesswoman appears to have been under a loose police surveillance. She is suspected to be heavily involved in a large scale con, and the reasons for her disappearance are not immediately clear. Meanwhile a drowned woman has been pulled from the nearby loch and a local pub has been burned to the ground causing the death of two more individuals. How all these crimes mesh together in this intricately plotted literary thriller makes for a very good read.

I have long been a fan of Denise Mina. Her books are dark, intense and meant for a mature audience. This well constructed book is much more than a straight crime story as she doesn’t tie up all the ends neatly, instead she shows that law can be imperfect and that often money can make a difference in how justice is dealt out. Even if this series has come to an end, I look forward to continuing my exploration of this author’s work.
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LibraryThing member pgchuis
This was gripping throughout with a twisty plot. I enjoyed the moment Morrow and DI Simmons bonded over the realization they had both been sent on the same anger management course. Mina is very good at getting you to sympathize with murderers by inhabiting their perspective. There was even
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something of a wrapping up/explanation at the end of this one. I think this is the last of the Morrow series, which is a pity.
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Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2015

Physical description

6 inches

ISBN

1443442267 / 9781443442268

Barcode

91100000178746

DDC/MDS

823.914
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