THE LESS DEAD

Narrator Katie Leung's Scottish burr adds atmosphere to this harrowing Tartan Noir. Driven by her pregnancy and the recent loss of her adoptive mother, Dr. Margo Dunlop searches for her birth mother. Instead she finds an aunt who drags her into the cold case of her mother's murder during a Glasgow crime wave. Leung's subdued delivery of the present-tense writing is mesmerizing. She excels at letting emotional tension build in her vivid character voices. As Margo becomes engrossed in the hunt for the killer, the perspective of a stalker is interspersed, enhanced by a chilling shift in Leung's tone to something low and hollow. This genre bender combines thoughtful examinations of class and society's treatment of women with a gritty mystery. S.T.C. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2020]