Bloody January
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3.9 • 159 Ratings
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
When a teenage boy shoots a young woman dead in the middle of a busy Glasgow street and then commits suicide, Detective Harry McCoy is sure of one thing. It wasn't a random act of violence.
With his new partner in tow, McCoy uses his underworld network to lead the investigation but soon runs up against a secret society led by Glasgow's wealthiest family, the Dunlops.
McCoy's boss doesn't want him to investigate. The Dunlops seem untouchable. But McCoy has other ideas . . .
In a helter-skelter tale – winding from moneyed elite to hipster music groupies to the brutal gangs of the urban wasteland – Bloody January brings to life the dark underbelly of 1970s Glasgow and introduces a dark and electrifying new voice in Scottish noir.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Det. Harry McCoy, the protagonist of Scottish author Parks's tautly woven first novel set in 1973, doesn't put much stock in information he gets from a criminal like Howie Nairn, but when Nairn locked up in Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison tells McCoy that a woman named Lorna is going to die the next day, the copper takes notice. The subsequent murder of 19-year-old waitress Lorna Skirving at a bus station by 17-year-old small-time thief Tommy Malone, immediately followed by Malone's suicide, sends McCoy on a hunt through the city's dankest slums and brothels all the way up to one of Glasgow's richest families, the Dunlops. McCoy's personal connection to the Dunlops who are nearly untouchable when it comes to the police makes him all the more determined to find a link between them and not only Lorna but also the other bodies that soon pile up. Stevie Cooper, McCoy's childhood friend who now makes less than savory business deals in the city, gives even the good guys a glossy sheen of blood and corruption. A worthy addition to the tartan noir canon, McCoy is a flawed hero to watch, as is his creator.
Customer Reviews
Glasgow as it was and policing as it shouldn’t be
This is a great story set in Glasgow in the Seventies and it tastes and smells of the city then. Authentic descriptions of a city yet to begin its climb back to the throbbing richness it once had and lost as it deindustrialised. McCoy is a credible character with a back story which is, for once, relevant to the crimes he seeks to solve. The plot is taut, in passing I note it seems to have “inspired” the plot of the over-rated Edge of the Grave, and locations, even down to Broughton House recognisable to anyone familiar with Glasgow in the Seventies. I couldn’t stop reading and will read more about Harry McCoy, it takes a lot to make the reader like, worry about a character who has so many defects but Parks does it.