To Die in June - Alan Parks

Death on the streets of Glasgow in the 1970s isn't an unusual circumstance, as you will know if you are familiar with any of Detective Inspector Harry McCoy's dealings in Alan Parks' series. With the degree of poverty in the city and the amount of down-and-outs on the streets, death by natural causes - if you include drinking yourself to death as natural causes - is not uncommon either. That certainly seems to be the likely verdict on the cause of death of Jamie MacLeod, "Govan Jamie" when he is found on waste ground in May 1975 not far from Argyle Street. It had to happen sooner or later, and there's not much chance that anyone would have a reason to kill him. A witness however tells McCoy that he saw both Jamie and another down-and-out die after drinking from what appears to be tampered hooch in a bottle of Irn Bru.

Still, the deaths of two homeless alcoholics doesn't seem like grounds that will warrant any further investigation by the police, and McCoy has other things to worry about. From the first five Harry McCoy thrillers, we know that Glasgow in the 1970s can be a grim place, but things seem to be particularly unpleasant in the sixth book, To Die in June. Aside from the deaths of the two down-and-outs, there are another couple of stomach churning deaths in the opening chapters, and to make matters worse, McCoy's old childhood friend and gangster Stevie Cooper is making a play for Possil, the district where McCoy is currently posted. A gang war is the last thing he needs on his hands while this handful of recent deaths remains unexplained. All the while McCoy's posting to Possil is supposed to be an undercover operation, keeping an eye on suspected crooked dealing at the station.

It sounds grim, but taking his lead from McCoy's queasiness about blood, Alan Parks is not one to wallow in gory descriptions. He's less interested in salaciousness of the murders than in the underlying social problems that give rise to them. He has other ways to capture the impoverishment and the social inequities in the city in the down-to-earth settings of unsavoury pubs frequented by McCoy, in the dialogues and conversations where he gathers information from the types of characters who inhabit them, many of whom are likely to end up like Govan Jamie, not least of which is McCoy's own estranged father, and indeed McCoy has some demons of his own to battle with.

Inevitably, there are a lot of the elements that seem familiar from previous books in the McCoy series. Former crooks and gangsters are trying to establish themselves as respectable businessmen, brutal gangland wars are still raging, there are concerns about missing children, and there are a lot of grisly deaths involving people at the lower end of the social ladder that no-one seems particularly concerned about. There is another element that is familiar and it's a deeper undercurrent that ties all the other parts together; change and redevelopment. Glasgow is a city ripe for exploitation, the post-war wastelands ready to be wiped away and built on anew. That might sound like a promise of modernisation and an attempt to eradicate poverty, but good intentions are not on anyone's list. There is money to be made, people to be paid-off and a lot of not very nice people involved. Even the police - or at least those not already downright crooked and on the take - struggle to strike a balance between solving crime and putting a lid on it.

That's where McCoy comes in and it's what makes Alan Parks' books fascinating historical social documents as well as hugely compelling crime thrillers. Indeed, Parks started out that way in a fictionalisation of a real-life crime in Bloody January, before the series developed into something else. Some of the elements might be familiar then, but that is because there is a consistency and flow to the series, with different elements rising to the surface over time - the generational differences, the social inequities, the religious divide - and there in the middle of it is the police, or more specifically and pertinently, Harry McCoy. McCoy's allegiances and sense of duty have been tested before and will be tested again. Essentially it's a classic situation of how a good man deals with evil on a daily basis and tries to not be corrupted by it, not take sides, and at the same time not find himself crushed by it all. By the time we have got to To Die in June, it's starting to take its toll on McCoy.

There is a feeling that Parks is essentially just going with the flow, letting all these issue arise naturally out of the world he has (re-)created. Acknowledging the influence of William McIlvenny in this arena, Parks himself knows the Glasgow of this period well and knows that when all the social problems are stirred up by those with money, power and influence, it's a powder keg ready to explode and there will be casualties. Rather then repeating himself, Parks is continually building on previous books, showing how everything that is wrong is connected, that "Poverty will make people do terrible things" and it just takes the flap of a butterfly wing to unleash the chaos. Parks just lets this toxic mix throw up the opportunity for crime and the results, as mentioned earlier, are not going to be pretty, but they can be seen to come from an authentic place. 

What also makes it more than just routine - although there is nothing routine really in how Parks relates this - is of course McCoy and his personal problems. We are aware of his difficult background in care, and can see that he is not far away from being a victim like those found on the waste ground of the city, places where his father now is falling apart drinking "red biddie", a lethal combination of red wine and meths. Although a respected police officer, currently stepping out with a movie-star girlfriend, it wouldn't take much for McCoy to end up like his father or like some of the old ex-police officers he encounters who mentored him in the past. Is he his father's son or his adopted father's son? That delicate balance of teetering on the edge, one that characterises the city of Glasgow itself in the seventies, is what makes this such a great series.

But it's not just McCoy; there is tremendous character in even the smallest of roles, from the current and former police officers to the down-and-outs and the witnesses. McCoy's colleague and friend Wattie is growing in confidence and character, beginning to stand up to McCoy, become his own man and more than just a sidekick. There is real development here. None of this takes place in isolation either, but is firmly related to what is going on there on the streets of Glasgow in the 1970s. That could take its toll on anyone, and even more so for someone of McCoy's background and profession. Despite external appearances, he seems more vulnerable, more fragile this time, and the consequences of what takes place in To Die in June are likely to resonate down through the remaining books in this remarkable and compelling series.

Reading notes: To Die in June, the sixth Harry McCoy thriller is published by Canongate Books on the 25th May 2023. I've been fortunate enough to pick up all the books in this series through NetGalley, so my thanks to them and the publisher for providing me with an advance preview copy of the latest terrific book in this great series. It definitely has the depth and range to take it to the full 12 months of the calendar..