Confidence - Denise Mina

[Mister Hobgoblin]

Confidence is apparently the second book in a series featuring crime bloggers, Anna and Fin, They are approached to investigate the disappearance of a young urban explorer, Lisa Lee, from her home in the Scottish borders. Lisa's last urban exploration video had featured an abandoned chateau in France where she had stumbled on a secret room and a priceless silver casket that apparently contained proof of Christ. 

 

Anna and Fin leave the holiday from Hell (actually the lighthouse at the Mull of Galloway) and find themselves press-ganged into accepting the case. What follows is a tale of intrigue and betrayal playing out across Scotland, Italy and France with a backdrop of immense wealth, fine art, private planes and sfiddley hotels. 

 

The plot feels a lot like I imagine the Da Vinci Code would be, if I could lower myself far enough to actually read it. Sinister bishops, grand conspiracies and all the bad people in the world converging on the single quest. It starts out being intriguing but it ends up being confusing. 

 

The main characters, similarly, start out to seem complex but after a while, they seem to be stereotypes. They serve a purpose, but have little existence outwith the plot itself. It is almost as though they were created for the specific purpose of chasing the casket. And where they do have a backstory, it does not cohere into the main story. The culmination, for example, is Anna's daughter realising that she is half Kazakh. I mean, why? Is that really the end note for a story in which the daughter had a walk-on part and Kazakhstan had nary a mention?

 

All of this should add up to making a rather bad book. But somehow the writing is lively enough, humorous enough, to keep the reader going. I am a fan of snippets of websites, emails and such-like. I like the trope of the dossier of found documents that combine to tell a story. And that's what Denise Mina delivers in Confidence. There is a social media out there which offers characters some degree of security in alerting the world to their peril, but also allows them to be surveilled. I like the variety it gives to the point of view and tone of voice. 

 

So my take on this is that Confidence is not a masterpiece, but it does entertain - which is pretty much what it set out to do, Three and a half stars rounded to a generous four. 

 

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