Power, abuse, love gone horribly wrong—and a crime that stretches back two decades. The Red Road is the brilliant new novel from two-time Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award–winning author Denise Mina.

31st August, 1997: Rose Wilson is fourteen but looks sixteen. Pimped out by her "boyfriend" and let down by a person she thought she loved, she has seen more of the darkness in life than someone twice her age. On the night of Princess Diana's death—a night everyone remembers—Rose snaps and commits two terrible crimes. Her life seems effectively over, but a sympathetic defence lawyer sets out to do what he can to save her, regardless of the consequences.

Present day: Detective Inspector Alex Morrow is a witness in the case of Michael Brown, a vicious, nasty arms dealer, more brutal and damaged than most of the criminals she meets. During the trial, while he is held in custody, Brown's fingerprints are found at the scene of a murder in the Red Road flats. It was impossible that he could have been there, and it's a mystery that Morrow just can't let go.

Meanwhile, a privileged Scottish lawyer sits in a castle on the Isle of Mull, waiting for an assassin to kill him. He has sold out his own father, something that will bring the wrath of the powerful down upon him.