May God Forgive

by Alan Parks

Overview

FINALIST FOR THE 2022 MCILVANNEY PRIZE

Detective Harry McCoy returns in the suspenseful, atmospheric fifth instalment in Alan Park’s internationally bestselling thriller series.

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.

“A series that no crime fan should miss: dangerous, thrilling, but with a kind voice to cut through the darkness.”—Scotsman

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609457532
Publisher:	Europa Editions, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/03/2022
Series:	Harry McCoy , #5
Pages:	372
Sales rank:	616,218
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Before beginning his writing career, Alan Parks was Creative Director at London Records and Warner Music, where he marketed and managed artists including All Saints, New Order, The Streets, Gnarls Barkley, and Cee Lo Green. His love of music, musician lore, and even the industry, comes through in his prize-winning mysteries, which are saturated with the atmosphere of the 1970s music scene, grubby and drug-addled as it often was. Parks’ debut novel, Bloody January, propelled him onto the international literary crime fiction circuit and won him praise, prizes, and success with readers. The second book in the Harry McCoy series, February’s Son, was a finalist for a MWA Edgar Award. Parks was born in Scotland, earned an M.A. in Moral Philosophy from the Universityof Glasgow, and still lives and works in the city he so vividly depicts in his Harry McCoy thrillers.

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/14/2022

Set in 1974, Edgar finalist Parks’s superb fifth procedural featuring Det. Harry McCoy of the Glasgow Police (after 2021’s The April Dead) finds McCoy just out of hospital after a four-week stay to rest a perforated ulcer. Subsisting on a diet of Pepto-Bismol and alcohol, he fumbles around the edges of a fire-bombing case that killed five women and children in a hairdressing salon. Three young men are charged with the crime. Their subsequent kidnapping from the van driving them to prison raises the stakes. McCoy pulls at loose threads until connections to other murders—and to a longtime gangster friend of his—appear. Throughout the unrelenting violence and the pathos of abject mid-city poverty, Parks keeps the focus on McCoy. Deeply flawed and battered by life, he doggedly persists in the hope things will turn out well for him, though the reader realizes they likely won’t. A Glasgow native, Parks provides a crisp, authentic look and feel to the back alleys, rough neighborhoods, and ramshackle tenements of his hometown. This entry ranks with the best of Ian Rankin and Stuart MacBride. Agent: Isobel Dixon, Blake Friedmann Literary (U.K.). (May)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for May God Forgive

★ “Noir has long been the dominant color in the palette of such Scottish writers as Ian Rankin and Denise Mina, but Parks manages to find a deeper shade of black, only slightly attenuated by Harry's willingness to go far off the grid to extract a wee bit of justice.”—Booklist (Starred Review)

★ “A Glasgow native, Parks provides a crisp, authentic look and feel to the back alleys, rough neighborhoods, and ramshackle tenements of his hometown. This entry ranks with the best of Ian Rankin and Stuart MacBride.”—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“Harry McCoy is the brightest dark star on the Tartan Noir scene for some time and in future critics of Scottish crime fiction will surely be referring to the triumvirate of Laidlaw, Rebus and McCoy... May God Forgive is crime fiction which pulls no punches, powerfully told and, at times, heartbreakingly poignant... One of the crime novels of 2022.”—Mike Ripley, Getting Away With Murder

“The fifth Harry McCoy thriller is as punchy, compulsive and, at times, as downright nasty as ever.”—The Herald Scotland

Praise for the Detective Harry McCoy Thriller Series

“The meticulously described setting is so suggestive readers may even catch whiffs of stale cigarette smoke and patchouli. Fans of Scottish noir will be satisfied.”—Publishers Weekly

“Parks’ sprawling plot offers not tidy whodunit puzzles but a wide-angle view of a gritty city in the grip of crime, home to an entertaining cross section of characters. Broad-shouldered McCoy is suitably unflappable as he walks Glasgow’s mean streets.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Parks captures the feel of a city long vanished in a breathless and tense retro crime caper.”—The Sun

“A series that no crime fan should miss: dangerous, thrilling, but with a kind voice to cut through the darkness.”—Scotsman

“Pitch-black tartan noir, set in 70s Glasgow…Compelling…with an emotional heart that’s hard to ignore.”—Daily Mail

From the Publisher