Book review: To Die in June, by Alan Parks

Fast-paced and readable, the latest instalment in the Harry McCoy series finds the Glasgow detective on the trail of a serial killer – and perhaps one or more corrupt cops. Review by Kirsty McLuckie

For anyone nostalgic about Glasgow in the 1970s, Alan Parks’ McCoy series of thrillers is sure to take you right back, but not in a particularly pleasant way. His detective, Harry McCoy, is deeply entangled with the decade’s notorious violence, usually to be found in the drinking dens, homeless squats and gang territories of the Dear Green Place.

McCoy himself is no paragon – his methods would see the Home Secretary involved these days and even 50 years ago, he wouldn’t have won any community policing awards.

To Die in June is the sixth in a series, and while it isn't a standalone book – plot points from earlier in the narrative have to be explained – Parks’ efficient pen portraits of the large supporting cast keep you in the loop.

Alan Parks PIC: Euan Robertson

It is a three-pronged narrative. A woman reports her missing son, but after launching a frantic search to find the boy, McCoy and his partner Wattie speak to her husband, a radical preacher with the cultish Church of Christ’s Suffering. He explains that there is no son. A miscarriage has destroyed her sanity. No records exist of any child and the investigation ends, but it leaves McCoy uneasy.

Meanwhile, a homeless alcoholic, Govan Jamie, is found dead on waste ground in the Calton area. This is not initially suspicious but when another body turns up, and then another – all men in their late 50s – it becomes a murder investigation.

But who would want to kill such vulnerable and inoffensive targets? McCoy’s disquiet is compounded by the knowledge that his own father perfectly fits the victim profile, and is drinking somewhere on the streets of Glasgow.

And the third strand? McCoy and Wattie have been seconded to Possil police station, ostensibly because of restructuring due to the changeover from Glasgow City Police to Strathclyde Police, but actually they are there to sniff out corruption. McCoy’s boss has got wind that the rot has gone further than his officers simply skimming protection money – which, it is implied, he would have been fine with.

McCoy’s a complex character, with close friends deep on the other side of the law from his time spent in children’s homes. His investigations are a balancing act of dodgy deals for information carried out in smoky pubs, with his part of the bargain being an extremely elastic offering – money, booze, turning a blind eye or getting far too involved in gang warfare.

The pace is fast, with short chapters and a real efficiency of language. The denouement relies too much on information from previous novels in the series to give full satisfaction to a one-time reader, but that only made me want to go back and start with book one.

To Die in June, by Alan Parks, Canongate, £16.99