Field Of Blood by Denise Mina

 

This novel is the first in the Paddy Meehan series.  Paddy is a copygirl at the Scottish Daily News in Glasgow, hoping to make it as a journalist in the man-dominated field of journalism.  Paddy lives in a typical Catholic household with lots of siblings and a mother and father who are dedicated to the church and what the neighbors think.  She is engaged to a good Catholic boy whose family has been friends with hers for decades.

When a three year old boy is declared missing and later found dead, Glasgow is shocked.  This kind of crime doesn't happen there, or at least that's the impression they like to give.  Soon another shocker occurs when two young boys, preteens, are arrested and charged with the murder.  Paddy is especially shocked because one of the boys is the cousin of her fiancée.  When she confides this fact to one of the few other women at the paper, she is betrayed and the story hits the front page the next day.  Now her family is shunning her and her fiancée isn't talking to her.  What can she do except solve the murder herself?

As Paddy starts to look into the murder, using her familiarity with the environment and its people to make discoveries the police have overlooked, she starts to understand the feelings of the Scottish man she is named for, a man the police found guilty of a murder he didn't commit and who was imprisoned for years before being released and pardoned.  Paddy believes the police are just settling for the first answer they come across rather than getting to the truth and with the help of a reporter at the paper she uncovers corruption and betrayal and the true killer.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.