Missy

A rowdy, exuberant, badly behaved blast of an adventure, Missy begins in 1862 with Dol McQueen, nineteen-year-old flash girl and opium user, heading for a boom town in the American West. On the way she prevents a man from hanging himself only to discover he is a murderous pimp. When he turns up later at the saloon where she has found work with some stolen goods he wants her to hide, Dol grabs the chance to start a new life and takes off into the wilderness with the loot and all hell in pursuit. Her alcoholic mother is an added burden on the mad, epic journey: can Dol save herself, her mother and their poisonous relationship? Like her literary predecessors, Becky Sharpe and Moll Flanders, Dol is a flawed but irresistible anti-heroine, and Missy is an astounding debut.

Reviews of Missy

"When a brilliant, award-winning Scottish playwright produces a first novel, you don't expect to be recommending it as a perfect beach read…Funny and exhilarating – Moll Flanders on drugs" The Times "Narrated by one of the more luminous characters in recent fiction" Guardian "A gorgeously sassy opening, it is surprising how winning, and how powerful, the voice of Dol McQueen, 19th-century American "flash-girl" actually is… Hannan has traversed the limits of history and given us a thoroughly modern woman" Independent "Hannan is comparable to no playwright working today so much as the Renaissance masters. He has a density of expression, a control of populous scenes, a sense of dramatic development and a sheer verve which few writers, living or dead, can touch" Sunday Times "An action-packed page-turner…riveting" Scotland on Sunday