-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Book Reviewed by:A dazzling debut mystery about a young girl and her grandmother grappling with the fallout of an unexplained murder in 1979 Glasgow,
If it hadn't been for her wee stupid dog Sid Vicious, 12-year-old Janey Devine might never have stumbled upon the corpse of Samantha Watson. And then maybe she'd still be able to sleep at night. And maybe her nana wouldn't be so worried sick all the time. And maybe Billy "The Ghost" Watson, a notorious gangster, wouldn't be on her tail—for it's Billy's daughter who was left for dead on those train tracks, and now Billy wants answers.
Fear and gossip spread through the tight-knit community of Possilpark, Glasgow, and while Janey swears she can't remember the details of that morning, the cops think she's hiding something—and indeed, there's something she knows that she's not quite ready to tell anyone else, not even her nana, who won't rest until this whole thing is behind them.
Shot through with remarkable humor and voice, Frances Crawford's stunning debut is a coming-of-age whodunnit, an intimate portrait of a working-class neighborhood that weaves Janey's innocent candor and her nana's hard-earned wisdom into a sweeping tale of grief and survival that marks the arrival of a major new voice in crime fiction.
Chapter 1
-5 days-
Sid Vicious is under the table waiting to see if there's any dropped food. When Nana isn't looking, I kick him. Right in the belly.
"That poor dog must be bursting," Nana says. "Will you no take him out, Janey?"
She says this every day but I can't, not anymore. It's Sid's fault that I found the dead body.
Chapter 2
The police want to interview Janey again. The wee soul has told them everything, so what in God's name do they want from her?
My nerves are shot so we sit upstairs on the bus so I can smoke. It's full fare at this time of day and no doubt Tottie-Heid will dock my wages when he finds I'm away. It was nice of Cathy to take over, especially with all that mess in the Gents. She's been one of the good ones through this. It's funny because I've never liked her much. Same with Mrs. Khan on the tenth floor, no a word between us in years, then this happens and she's bringing food and wee treats for Janey. Funny.
Janey's sitting cooried in tight beside me, the way she used ...
A Bad, Bad Place is an excellent whodunnit, but at its core it's a bittersweet love letter to the characters that (for good or for ill) made up this marginalized and underserved slice of society. What Crawford has achieved is no mean feat: a story that grips and characters that stroll fully formed off the page and into your consciousness, where they're bound to linger long after the final page. As the city's official motto goes, "People Make Glasgow"—and A Bad, Bad Place has some of the best and worst you could ever hope to meet...continued
Full Review
(706 words)
(Reviewed by Alex Russell).
Belinda Bauer, author of Blacklands
Gripping, gruesome, and so gritty you can smell it. A visceral and exciting debut. Janice Hallett, bestselling author of The Appeal
The very best writing can transport you through time and place—well, A Bad, Bad Place took me to Glasgow, to 1979 and to a young girl who discovers a brutal murder, the repercussions of which resound across a troubled community. It's hard to believe this richly authentic, funny, moving, and insightful story, beautifully written in local dialect, is actually a debut. Bravo, Frances Crawford! Val McDermid, internationally No.1 bestselling author of Past Lying
A moving evocation of working-class lives. It's clever, honest, heart-rending, and funny too. It doesn't shy away from the darkness but it also reveals the love and compassion that sustain people. And it's wonderfully twisty too, giving our assumptions a good shake-up.
A Bad, Bad Place, the excellent debut novel from Frances Crawford, is set in Glasgow, Scotland's biggest city. For those with any knowledge of the country and its literature, the title will seem like a knowing wink: over the past century, Glasgow has developed a literary reputation for being a very bad place indeed, one where poverty, crime, and drugs run rampant.
The origins of this reputation can be traced back to the inter-war years and the novel No Mean City (1935). Based on short stories by Alexander MacArthur, an unemployed baker, which were subsequently reworked for publication by the journalist H. Kingsley Long, the book recounts the exploits of the "razor gangs" that roamed the tenement slums of the British ...
If you liked A Bad, Bad Place, try these:
by Denise Mina
Published 2025
In this provocative mystery from beloved crime writer Denise Mina, new evidence in an old murder case forces one woman to make an impossible choice.
What will it take to tell the truth when your life depends on a lie?
by Douglas Stuart
Published 2023
A story of queer love and working-class families, Young Mungo is the brilliant second novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain.
by Lissa Evans
Published 2016
Paper Moon meets the Blitz in this original black comedy, set in World War II England, chronicling an unlikely alliance between a small time con artist and a young orphan evacuee.
A library is a temple unabridged with priceless treasure...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
