The April Dead - Alan Parks

 I remember coming across the first of Alan Parks' Harry McCoy series four or five years ago.   Bloody January and February's Son are reviewed on this blog.   I somehow missed the third, Bobby March Will Live Forever (great title) and here we are with number four, The April Dead.   Still back in 1974 Glasgow, McCoy is called to a tenement flat where a young man has blown himself up making a bomb.   This of course is the heyday of the Troubles in Ulster, mainland IRA outrages, the Angry Brigade and all that.   But what got this kid so fired up?

Then Harry is approached by an American, Andrew Stewart, whose son Donny has gone missing from the naval base at Greenock.   Harry agrees to look into it, but first he has to collect his old pal from the in-care days, Stevie Cooper, about to be released from six months in prison at Aberdeen.   Stewart and Stevie take to one another.   Meanwhile forensics find someone else's blood in the bombmaker's flat, a very rare type, Donny Stewart's type.

Homemade bombs start going off everywhere - a smallish one in the cathedral, something much bigger at a local brewery.   People are dying.   Harry finds himself leading an nvestigation into rightwing nationalism, the Territorial Army, and torture techniques developed for officially-denied use in Northern Ireland.

As ever, the characters are brilliantly well-drawn and the plot keeps deepening.   I especially enjoyed the way Parks handled the involvement of the travelling fairground community.   The April Dead is every bit as good as the first two in the series.   I really must look out for March and May.

February's Son - Alan Parks

I read Parks' first, Bloody January, in bloody January, which was apt. Damned if I was going to wait until next February to read the second in the Harry McCoy series, which is this, February's Son. It starts three weeks after Bloody January ended. McCoy has recovered from his injuries and is called into work the day before his sick leave was supposed to end. This being Glasgow in 1973, there has been a murder, a nasty one. The victim is the current star of Celtic FC and soon-to-be son-in-law of the murderous Jake Scobie, head of one of the Glasgow crime families. Has Jake heard that young Charlie has been playing away? It's a promising line of inquiry, but it grinds to a halt when Jake is butchered in just the same way.

Meanwhile McCoy's friend and childhood protector Stevie Cooper has seen a picture of one of their abusers, 'Uncle Kenny', in the paper. Now they know who Kenny is, can Cooper and McCoy let things lie? We all know that's unlikely.

As I said back in January, Parks is a real find, a direct heir to Ian Rankin, albeit they are about the same age. The police side of his stories is pure procedural with all the banter and implicit loyalties and feuds that involves. The noir side is very dark indeed. Everybody over the last decade has done a child abuse storyline, but Parks has his lead cop as a victim who carries his abuse with him for life.

February's Son is absolutely as good as Bloody January, maybe even slightly better. I like, for example, the way McCoy's relationship with Susan is handled, and the development of the role of Jumbo. The ending is again just a fraction contrived, but this is my one and only criticism. I loved it. Roll on March!

Bloody January - Alan Parks

Bloody January is a debut novel, though Parks cleverly leads us to believe there was an earlier story. Publishers Canongate have done a solid job in promoting Parks and they are right to do so. I can't remember a better first novel in any Tartan Noir series. DI Harry McCoy is definitely on his way to a TV near you.

Parks' masterstroke is to combine the two leading tropes of today's Scottish crime fiction - noir and nostalgia. Bloody January is set in 1973, in the week Bowie took Aladdin Sane to Glasgow. McCoy and his new mentee Wattie are hanging around the bus station when a young lad shoots a young girl, then himself. The trail leads to aristocracy, big business, police corruption, the substrates of prostitution and - for a fleeting cameo, Bowie himself. What else could anyone who remembers 1973 possibly want?


The denouement is suspenseful and bloody, on the rooftops of Glasgow in a snowstorm. Brilliant.


My only criticism is that in working the tropes Parks has deployed (and combined) two that for me are already cliché - the obligatory beating of our hero and a flashback to his wretched childhood in a religious children's home. These, however, only occupy a few pages and do explain his relationship with the local villain Stevie Cooper. Other than that, the characters - especially Cooper - are compelling and credible. I especially liked McCoy's boss Murray who comes across straight but who might have a lot of secrets behind his success. The writing, both prose and dialogue, reads absolutely note-perfect and is technically very accomplished. There are writers who have been hammering away for decades who come nowhere near Parks' level of artistic fluency.

A debut that I thoroughly recommend. I can't wait for the next instalment.