Denise Mina was born in Glasgow in 1966. Her father worked as an engineer, and as a result of his job the family moved twenty one times in eighteen years from Paris to the Hague, London, Scotland and Bergen. Mina left school at sixteen and worked in a variety of low-skilled jobs, including: bar maid, kitchen porter and cook. She also worked for a time in a meat processing factory. Prior to attending university in her twenties, she worked in auxiliary nursing for geriatric and terminal care patients.

It was while researching a PhD thesis on the ascription of mental illness to female offenders, and teaching criminology and criminal law at Strathclyde University in the 1990s, that she decided to write her first novel Garnethill. The book was eventually published by Transworld in 1998 and went on to win the Crime Writers' Association John Creasy Dagger for Best First Crime Novel.

She currently lives in Glasgow.

Novels

Garnethill trilogy

• Garnethill (1998)
• Exile (2000)
• Resolution (2001)

Patricia "Paddy" Meehan novels

• The Field of Blood (2005)
• The Dead Hour (2006)
• The Last Breath (2007) - published as Slip of the Knife in America

Other novels

• Sanctum (2003) (published as Deception in the US in 2004)
• Still Midnight (2009)

Comics

• Hellblazer, # 216-228 (DC Comics, 2006-2007)
• "Empathy is the Enemy" collected Hellblazer issues 216—222
• "The Red Right Hand" collected Hellblazer issues 223—228

Plays

• Ida Tamson (2006)
• A Drunk Woman Looks at the Thistle (2007) based on Hugh MacDiarmid's A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle and first performed by Karen Dunbar.

Comic Collections and Graphic Novels

• Hellblazer: Empathy is the Enemy (2006)
• Hellblazer: The Red Right Hand (2007)
• A Sickness in the Family (2010)