Janey Devine, is a 12 year-old working-class girl in nineteen seventy nine Glasgow, who happens upon the body of a murdered woman- and must face an insular community desperate for answers, as well as herself. If it hadn’t been for her wee stupid dog, Sid Vicious, Janey 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 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 want answers.

Fear and gossip have spread through the tight-knit community of possilpark, 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, not even her nana, who won’t rest until this whole thing is behind them.

Shot through with remarkable humor, Frances Crawford’s stunning debut is a coming-of-age whodunit an intimate portrait of a working-class neighbourhood 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.

A Bad, Bad Place by Frances Crawford £16.99,  Soho Crime, 352 pages.