May 12

May God Forgive – Alan Parks

Glasgow is a city in mourning. An arson attack on a hairdresser’s has left five dead. Tempers are frayed and sentiments running high.

When three youths are charged the city goes wild. A crowd gathers outside the courthouse but as the police drive the young men to prison, the van is rammed by a truck, and the men are grabbed and bundled into a car. The next day, the body of one of them is dumped in the city centre. A note has been sent to the newspaper: one down, two to go.

Detective Harry McCoy has twenty-four hours to find the kidnapped boys before they all turn up dead, and it is going to mean taking down some of Glasgow’s most powerful people to do it…

 

My thanks to Canongate for my review copy and to Anne Cater of Random Things Blog Tours for the opportunity to join the May God Forgive blog tour.

 

It’s hard to know where to start with May God Forgive as the Harry McCoy books by Alan Parks are among my most anticipated releases each year. I had been looking forward to reading this book almost from the moment I finished last year’s The April Dead. The good news is that the wait was absolutely worth it.  May God Forgive swept me up and folded me back into McCoy’s Glasgow of 1974 – it’s dark, brutal, unflinching and lots of other adjectives which you want from a story in the Glasgow of old.

If you are not familiar with Harry McCoy then the most important advice I can offer at this stage is go and grab a copy of Bloody January and start reading. If you want to jump straight in with May God Forgive then you can do this too as key characters, relationships and important events are all smoothly introduced by the author which should ensure no new readers are disadvantaged. For returning readers you can easily slip back into McCoy’s life, share the pain of Wattie’s sleepless nights with a teething toddler and tense when Stevie Cooper is in the scene as you never quite know when he may kick off!

Events in May God Forgive take place just a few weeks before I was born so I can’t claim any prior knowledge of how Glasgow was at this time. What I can confirm is that Alan Parks makes the old city and its hard reputation feel incredibly vivid and realistic. It’s the time of gangsters controlling their turf, of backroom pornographers snapping racy pictures of hard-up housewives, of violent attacks, cheap booze and a growing market in dodgy pills. And Glasgow’s finest are not a slick operation that can keep the city a safe place for its residents.

As we join the story the city is in outrage and mouring. An arson attack on a commercial property in the city resulted in the deaths of several women and children. Killing kids is never tolerated so the police recieved a tip-off as to where the perpretrators could be found. Three teenage boys are being brought to the court for sentencing and the crowds are out braying for blood. They want the death penalty brought back, they want the culprits released into their “care” so justice can be swiftly delivered. It’s chaos and it’s McCoy’s first day back at work after a period of enforced absence. Our main man has been convalesing as a stomach ulcer kept him in crippling pain but that’s nothing compared to the problems which are about to land in his lap.

McCoy’s ulcer is possibly one of the few lighthearted elements to the story, his slugging of pepto bismal when juggling his smoking, drinking and fried breakfasts sees a man caught in the horns of dilemma. There are few laughs elsewhere. Gangsters are flexing and posturing. An old acquintance of Harry’s has met a nasty end but leaves more questions than anyone could have expected. Wattie has been tasked with identifying the body of a young girl who was found dead in a city graveyard and those arsonists are in more trouble than they could ever have anticipated. Who will protect the murderers when a whole city wants them dead?

I am faced with a problem. How can I keep finding new ways to describe the absolute reading pleasure I get from this series? Each book delights and delivers thrills, tension and tramatic drama. I give each book a five star review and I wonder how Alan Parks can match it the next time out. Only he doesn’t just match the quality of the previous titles – he improves on them. Each book seems better than the last – how is this possible if there isn’t some sort of witchcraft involved? Magical. That’s what I am going with this time…”magical”.

 

May God Forgive is published by Canongate and is available in Hardback, Digital and Audiobook format. You can order a copy here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/may-god-forgive/alan-parks/9781838856748

 

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February 18

Bury Them Deep – James Oswald

When a member of the Police Scotland team fails to clock-in for work, concern for her whereabouts is immediate… and the discovery of her burnt-out car in remote woodland to the south of Edinburgh sets off a desperate search for the missing woman.

Meanwhile, DCI Tony McLean and the team are preparing for a major anti-corruption operation – one which may raise the ire of more than a few powerful people in the city. Is Anya Renfrew’s disappearance a co-incidence or related to the case?

McLean’s investigations suggest that perhaps that Anya isn’t the first woman to have mysteriously vanished in these ancient hills. Once again, McLean can’t shake the feeling that there is a far greater evil at work here…

 

My thanks to Jennifer at the publishers for my review copy and to Anne Cater at Random Things Blog Tours for the chance to join the Bury Them Deep blog tour.

 

When a James Oswald book opens with an extract from a book of Myths and Legends which discusses the story of Sawney Bean you need to suppress a shiver of anticipation.  Tony McLean clearly has a troublesome case awaiting.

For those not familiar with Sawney Bean and wonder why I anticipated a challenging time for Tony; the intro contains the following words “gruesome”, “incestuous”, nurtured on human flesh”, “burned” and “executed”. This is all before page one!  James Oswald never shies away from the darker side of crime thrillers and for the 10th Inspector McLean novel he is not giving his hero any respite.

As the story opens we are with an unnamed woman venturing out as she prepares to participate in an activity she both anticipates and hates herself for seeking.  We then cut to McLean as he also prepares for a major (and secret) cross-agency operation – the brilliantly named Operation Caterwaul.  However Caterwaul cannot start until a key member of the Police Scotland team turns up and the normally dependable Anya Renfrew is missing.

Could Renfrew be the woman we observed in the opening chapter? If it is the same person then how will Tony and his colleagues track her down?  As we read deeper into Bury Them Deep we learn woman we saw heading out in chapter one has placed herself in real peril and the chances of her surviving are slim. Very slim.

The police step up efforts to track their missing colleague but as they look into her life away from work they find they don’t really know her as well as they may have believed.  Renfrew has been living a double life and McLean is going to have to take unusual steps to get to know her better.  He will be distracted from this by the re-introduction of Norman Bale, a prisoner in a secure unit who also claims to be a childhood friend of McLean but a friend McLean believed died at a young age.

With numerous demands on his attention and a personal life which is not as robust and secure as he would like Bury Them Deep will challenge McLean in a way readers will love.

I am a big fan of this series and find it hard to believe we are already at book 10. James Oswald has built a cracking character base to surround McLean and he keeps the compelling stories spinning around their lives despite the darkness he pits them against.

I don’t want to discuss too much of the detail behind Bury Them Deep as the joy in reading this shouldn’t be dimmed by reading spoilers. It’s a wickedly dark tale and there are clues to the bigger picture which I totally missed until I reached the endgame. Love when that happens.

Highly recommended – James Oswald never fails to deliver the thrills and Bury Them Deep is excellent.

 

Bury Them Deep is published by Wildfire and is available in hardback, digital and audiobook format.  You can order your copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07T6YDYPW/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

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March 19

To Kill The Truth – Sam Bourne

Someone is trying to destroy the evidence of history’s greatest crimes.

Academics and Holocaust survivors dead in mysterious circumstances. Museums and libraries burning. Digital records and irreplaceable proofs, lost for ever.

Former White House operative Maggie Costello has sworn off politics. But when the Governor of Virginia seeks her help to stop the lethal spiral of killings, she knows that this is bigger than any political game.

As Black Lives Matter protestors clash with slavery deniers, America is on a knife-edge and time is running out. This deadly conspiracy could ignite a new Civil War – but who stands to gain most from the chaos?

Taut, authoritative and explosive, To Kill the Truth takes us to the edge of anarchy, a world without truth in which history will be rewritten by those who live to shape it.

 

I received a review copy from the publishers through Netgalley

Last year I found myself drawn to a book called To Kill the President.  It was my introduction to Maggie Costello – flame haired, American Irish force to be reckoned with. My review of To Kill The President is here and it’s a book I still recommend to fans of political thrillers.

Now Costello returns in To Kill The Truth.  It is a story which struck fear into my heart as libraries and books are being destroyed as someone tries to remove historical records, seemingly to allow sufficient doubt over recorded historical events.  Could slavery or the holocaust be denied if the historical records were removed and modern voices sought to re-establish “facts” or offer different interpretations on past events?

In a courthouse a case is playing out which has potential to ignite racial tensions across the world – the question at the heart of the trial is “did slavery happen?”  With the jury’s decision looming Maggie Costello is trying to establish if there could be any connection with the court case and the destruction of the libraries and museums which house the history of the world.

To Kill The Truth is a fast paced political thriller which and I really enjoyed it. The power players of Washington are trying to pull the strings and control any damage limitation. Journalists are digging for connections, academics are dying and Maggie is caught in the midst of it all.  She will become a target for forces unknown – her reputation and her credibility will be stripped from her and she must show resilience to make her voice heard.

Sam Bourne taps into the issues of the day and spins an exciting story which, at times, felt alarmingly uncomfortable to contemplate as just fiction. Well worth seeking this book out – it is currently available in all good bookshops.

 

To Kill the Truth is published by Quercus and is available in Hardback, Digital and audiobook format.  You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kill-Truth-Sam-Bourne/dp/1787474917/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=to+kill+the+truth&qid=1552758453&s=gateway&sr=8-1

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