I loved Conviction, Denise Mina’s first book to feature Anna McDonald and Fin Cohen so I was excited for the release of Confidence, set around a year after Anna and Fin raced around Europe while podcasting their journey to expose the murderer of an old friend and his children.

When the story opens, Anna, Fin, their respective ex-partners, Hamish and Estelle, Fin’s new girlfriend, Sofia, plus Anna and Hamish’s daughters, and Hamish and Estelle’s new baby, are holidaying together in a Scottish lighthouse. Anna, desperately trying to distract herself from the tense atmosphere, mostly caused by Sofia, is scrolling through messages from listeners to their now successful podcast when a cryptic tweet from a user called WBGrates catches her eye.

Lisa Lee didn’t take it. Please tell them.

Attached to the message are two links, one to a YouTube film of a young woman, Lisa Lee, exploring an abandoned French chateau in an undisclosed location, the other to a page in an auction catalogue displaying a small antique silver casket that is visible in Lee’s footage. Not understanding the connection, Anna searches online and learns the Voyniche Casket is expected to be the subject of a frenzied bidding war among groups that believe it contains proof of Christ’s resurrection, and that Lisa Lee has been reported missing.

Seizing the excuse to abandon the holiday Anna and Fin follow up, and are quickly drawn into the hunt for the missing girl, and the truth about the casket. The pair don’t seem to have a lot of agency in the plot though, their movements are mainly dictated by Bram Van Wyk, a wealthy former smuggler/con man, and his desperate bid to recover the casket. It sort of feels like Mina had an idea for a thriller about smuggling and fanaticism, but didn’t know what to do with it, so she wrote Anna and Fin into it. Unfortunately I think it was a poor fit, and everything suffered as a result. While I easily dismissed plot inconsistencies and absurdities in Conviction, here they were jarring, and the twists had little impact.

The story primarily unfolds from Anna’s first person perspective, alternating with short transcripts from their podcast that serve to fill in some information gaps. While Anna won me over in Conviction, I didn’t find her nearly as compelling or witty here, and Finn may as well have been totally absent.

The pace also suffered with the plot issues and a fair amount of superfluous description. The travel helped somewhat as Anna and Finn fly around Europe courtesy of private jets and helicopters.

I think it’s clear I am disappointed by Confidence, I was feeling a little more generous immediately after finishing it but in retrospect it’s flawed enough that I feel it’s just barely okay, and wouldn’t recommend it. ( )

I listened to this on audiobook, which perhaps explains why I kept getting a bit confused about what exactly had happened to this wretched casket. As other reviewers have commented, this was all a bit Dan Brown (not that I've ever managed to get the whole way through a Dan Brown novel) and I wasn't sure how seriously we were supposed to take all the pontificating about faith and belief etc.

The beginning of the novel, in the lighthouse with the utterly malicious Sophia, seemed completely disconnected from the rest of the novel, and who on earth is Trina, whom Fin refers to at the end...? ( )

Anna and Fin are podcasters and crime journalists who are contacted by Lisa Lee. Lisa is an Urban Explorer who has posted a video of a visit to an abandoned chateau but now she has disappeared. Featuring on the film is a silver casket and the hint that it might be of great religious significance so when it goes on sale at a Paris auction house Lisa is immediately suspected. Anna and Fin are left trying to unravel the tale in the company of a crazed South African smuggler who also wants the casket.
Mina is such a fantastic crime writer that the reader almost forgets the crafting that goes into this type of thriller. I almost think it is a lightweight, throwaway piece of writer because it flies along at a pace with such a dark streak of humour through throughout. If you imagine the DaVinci Code without the overly religious theorising and with a really talented writer, you're not even halfway there! ( )

We met Anna McDonald and Fin Cohen in the book Conviction when we find out Anna’s husband, Hamish, is running off with Anna’s best friend and Fin’s wife, Estelle. When a photo of Anna and Fin end up on social media, Anna realizes that her life as she knows it is over and her past will soon catch up with her. Anna’s favorite pastime is listening to true crime podcasts, and one suggests that someone she knows might be guilty of scuttling his own boat, killing someone in the process. Not believing this, Anna and Fin set out to prove her friend’s innocence and record a podcast of their exploits.
In Confidence, the duo is recording their second podcast. Anna’s idea of an extended family vacation with Hamish and a pregnant Estelle, Fin and his extremely annoying new girlfriend, Sofia, Anna and her two children, turns out to be a total disaster. Anna begins listening to podcasts, specifically one by urban explorer, Lisa Lee, who livestreams her exploration of abandoned mansions and chateaus. She disappeared soon after her last podcast was recorded, about a year earlier. In this particular chateau, Lisa notes all the artwork counterpointed with the mold on the walls and many ancient religious artifacts. One of them was the coveted Christian relic, the Voyniche Casket which supposedly holds proof of Christ’s ascension. The casket has just come on the auction block in Paris.
Anna remembers Lisa as someone who had emailed her but she can’t access the email because her password is at home. Using this as a great excuse, Anna jumps ship and Fin opts to join her, leaving the other vacationers behind.
When they arrive home, they are met by rich South African Bram van Wyk who, among his other dubious endeavors, is a dealer in antique relics. He inserts himself into Anna and Fin’s search for the missing Lisa, stating that he will finance the investigation. Lisa is rumored to have stolen the casket from the chateau, which is against the urbex’s unwritten code of ethics. Their search brings them to Paris, Rome and London.
Antique collectors say there is a curse associated with the Voyniche Casket dating back decades because possessors of the casket have met brutal ends. In the process of their search they meet some very suave relic collectors, some very dubious ones, including van Wyk, and some very deadly ones. While Anna and Fin want to find Lisa Lee, van Wyk’s goal is much more nebulous and the podcasters aren’t quite sure about anything except they can’t trust him for a minute.
As a bonus, Mina mentions the theft at the Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990 in which over $500 million of art masterpieces were stolen and never recovered, nor were the thieves ever apprehended. Look it up. It makes for very interesting reading.
Mina is a master of suspense. Tension begins with Anna and Fin leaving their cold and drafty lighthouse vacation home in a tremendous storm with limited driving visibility—will they actually arrive safely. It is exacerbated when they see a dark car with tinted windows waiting when they arrive at Anna’s Glasgow house in the middle of the dark night and the tension keeps building from there. This is a true page turner with an underlying sense of threat on each page.
One review called Confidence sophisticated and well plotted. Another said the plot moves at a breathless pace. Finally, another review stated “Denise Mina slowly drip feeds the history of the…Voyniche Casket into the story, the legend of its existence and of its supposed contents and the pains taken to keep them sacred and secure and it really adds to the mystery and the aura surrounding the whole case.”
Confidence stands on its own and readers need not have read Conviction. ( )

This sequel to Conviction takes the two unlikely partners in true-crime podcasting on another strange caper, in this case what happened to a YouTuber who disappeared after she broke into a vacant chateau and saw a casket there that holds a mysterious power. When it is discovered and goes up for auction, it causes fundamentalist Christians who believe it has enormous significance to gather in Paris for a mass demonstration in support of an American billionaire who wants to acquire it for his collection of religious artifacts. Anna and Fin are only focused on the missing YouTuber, but they are caught up in the drama around a man who plans to bid on the casket and has been abruptly saddled with a son he had never met before.

Though I felt this book lacked the passionate anger that fueled Conviction, it has Mina's trademark wry humor and fondly realized characters, especially those who are terribly flawed human beings yet deeply sympathetic, along with a bizarre globe-trotting chase for information. I have yet to encounter a book by Denise Mina that wasn't inventive and wonderfully written.