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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 ...

Period crime fiction isn't new or original and there are plenty of gritty dramas to be explored in darker times, but what is exceptional in the 1970s' setting of Alan Parks' Harry McCoy thrillers is how he succeeds in showing how its past is relevant to today. Peeling back the layers of history each of the books reveals how the poverty, deprivation and social inequality that gives rise to small-time crime, drug dealing and gang violence has developed into the kind if crime we see today on a global scale. Crime in 70s' Glasgow takes on many forms, but in May God Forgive  it's brought home to McCoy just how great the challenges are in dealing with the source of those problems through the normal channels of the criminal justice system. It seems like business as usual then as far as crime and death is concerned in the city at the start of May God Forgive . Glasgow in 1974, as we have come to see pretty comprehensively in the four previous gritty police detective Harry ...

It’s not going to be hard to get Alan Parks Harry McCoy series in order. After Bloody January , February’s Son and Bobby March Will Live Forever , The April Dead brings more death to the streets of Glasgow in the 1970s. And, while there might not have been a great deal that was new in the last book, The April Dead does expand on a period that has proved to be significant in relation to the expansion of crime not just in Glasgow but in the wider UK. The connections extend further, crime becomes less localised and part of a larger network, all of which has greater implications for the Glasgow police force, and Detective Harry McCoy. We’re in April 1974 in this latest book in the series. A man has been killed in an explosion in a small flat in an unlikely part of the city to be targeted by bombers. An IRA campaign has however already targeted London, Manchester and Birmingham, and the gruesome remains at the scene do make it look like the guy was making a homemade bomb when it went off...

We’ve reached July 1973 in Alan Parks’ gritty Glasgow detective crime series and things don’t seem to be getting any better for Harry McCoy. In fact it all seems very much business as usual for any reader familiar with the first two books ( Bloody January , February’s Son ), but if Bobby March Will Live Forever doesn’t progress much further in its look at the development and connection between crime and drugs, or how crime impacts differently on the wealthy and lower orders of society in the city, it very much holds ground in what is turning out to be a terrific series. Bobby March is or was a promising (fictional) local rock star who in once auditioned for the Rolling Stones. Like many others his career has been cut short by the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle and when Harry McCoy is called in the morning after his last show in Glasgow, he’s not all that surprised to find March dead from a drug overdose in his hotel room. Most of the police and the city are more concerned about a missing chi...

Although Alan Parks wrapped up the first Harry McCoy novel well, you could tell that there was unfinished business both personal and professional at the conclusion of Bloody January . Based around a historical case, Parks nonetheless had delved/descended into the murk of gangland violence and police corruption in Glasgow in the 1970s to ensure that there would undoubtedly be more dark corners to dig into further. In February’s Son Alan Parks get down and dirty once again on the mean streets of Glasgow. Unfortunately for Harry McCoy, he has associations with both the police and the gangs that make it difficult to know where his allegiances lie. Obviously with himself above all else, since it’s at least managed to keep him alive this far. That ambiguous quality to the character is what keeps things interesting and provides a broader view of life and crime on the streets, McCoy having to mix with some disreputable and distasteful types and take actions that lie well beyond the remit and ...

It doesn’t take too long to notice that Bloody January has all the classic ingredients and, most essentially, the style of a classic noir. The only real differences here is that we are walking down the mean streets of Glasgow and that the main detective isn’t a private one but one of dubious character in the Glasgow police force. Other than that, the character of corruption and moral decay is as plain as the mean streets, wasteland areas, damp housing schemes, dingy brothels, bleak drinking dens and dodgy nightclubs of a bloody January in the city in 1973. The nature of the characters that inhabit this moral wasteland and the situation that they find themselves in is also one familiar to fans of classic noir, but this is no pastiche; if it feels noir, then it’s the nature of the subject and Alan Parks’ debut is very much rooted in the its own time and place. In such an environment our lead detective Harry McCoy would of course be a heavy drinker, would be familiar with and no doubt sa...