Denise Mina was born in Glasgow in 1966. Because of her father's job as an engineer, the family followed the North Sea oil boom of the seventies around Europe, moving twenty one times in eighteen years from Paris to the Hague, London, Scotland and Bergen. She left school at sixteen and did a number of poorly paid jobs: working in a meat factory, bar maid, kitchen porter and cook. Eventually she settled in auxiliary nursing for geriatric and terminal care patients.

At twenty one she passed some exams and started Law school at Glasgow University and went on to research a PhD thesis at Strathclyde University on the ascription of mental illness to female offenders, teaching criminology and criminal law in the mean time. Misusing her grant she stayed at home and wrote a novel, 'Garnethill' when she was supposed to be studying instead.

'Garnethill' won the Crime Writers' Association John Creasy Dagger for the best first crime novel and was the start of a trilogy completed by 'Exile' and 'Resolution'. A fourth novel followed, a stand alone, named 'Sanctum' in the UK and 'Deception' in the US. Her fifth novel is called 'The Field of Blood'; the first of a series of five books following the career and life of journalist Paddy Meehan from the newsrooms of the early 1980s and 1990s