TO the uninitiated, “true crime fiction” might sound like a contradiction in terms. However, as Denise Mina’s acclaimed novel The Long Drop – now adapted for the Citizens Theatre stage by Linda McLean – attests, prose fiction that speculates about the whys and wherefores of real criminal events is very much a thing.
If Mina and McLean are to be believed (and they surely are), the Glasgow underworld of 1957 was one in which business and criminality displayed a positively Coppola-esque familiarity. It was also – needless to say – a very male-dominated world indeed.
