Bobby March Will Live Forever

January 11, 2021
Set in 1973 Glasgow, Scotland, Edgar finalist Parks’s solid third unapologetically violent crime novel featuring Harry McCoy (after 2019’s February’s Son) immerses the police detective in the drug and music-fueled counterculture of the times. Assigned to uncover the mystery surrounding the overdose death of a rock star found dead in a hotel room, McCoy must also resolve a botched case involving an abducted child in which the wrongfully accused man committed suicide while in custody. Complicating matters is a covert mission from McCoy’s chief, who has tasked the detective to find his 15-year-old runaway niece, who may be living with her thug of a boyfriend. Though the narrative early on feels unfocused, it quickly gains purpose and momentum, and builds to an impressively powerful conclusion. Maneuvering through the mean streets of Glasgow, the morally ambiguous, deeply flawed McCoy makes an ideal antihero. 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. Agent: Tom Witcomb, Blake Friedmann Literary (U.K.).

February 1, 2021
A rugged, righteous detective battles the rising tide of crime in 1970s Glasgow. The unexpected death of a Glaswegian native son and minor rock star, while not central to the plot of Harry McCoy's third procedural, looms over all as a shadow and a cautionary tale. The story of Beatkickers guitarist Bobby March, from his career beginnings in 1964 to his death from an overdose, is threaded through the book in short, italicized cuts, with a delightful coda. Nearly everyone McCoy meets seems moved by Bobby's death and wants to commiserate over him. The city is equally obsessed with Alice Kelly, a missing little girl. McCoy is officially working on this case, but his boss, Chief Inspector Murray, gives him a special off-the-record assignment. Murray's precocious niece, Laura, a frequent runaway, has gone missing again, this time at the probable instigation of her sketchy new boyfriend, Donny MacRae. When McCoy goes to Donny's flat to question him, he finds the young man stabbed to death. Finding Laura soon afterward should be the end of the story but instead marks the beginning of a different investigation. In the meantime, a teenager is arrested for Alice Kelly's kidnapping, but more twists follow in that storyline as well. 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. Brisk Scottish noir with an appealingly hard edge.

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Starred review from April 1, 2021
The eponymous Bobby March was a well-known rock singer in the '60s who blew his chance at lasting fame and instead became a drug addict, winding up a murder victim in 1974. His killing lands on the patch of hard-boozing Scottish copper Harry McCoy, who is both a deeply flawed human being and a top-notch policeman. Unfortunately, McCoy has managed to anger his boss, and, rather than working either the March murder or the high-profile kidnapping of a young woman, Alice Kelly, he is assigned to a seemingly dead-end series of unsolved bank robberies. Then a friend reports that his niece Laura has run away and asks McCoy to find her. Grabbing the chance to escape the dreary paperwork related to the robberies, McCoy hits the streets. Little does he know that several bizarre twists will link Laura's disappearance to the Kelly kidnapping, March's murder, and even the bank robberies. Using the structure of a police procedural, Parks takes readers deep into the sordid world of Glasgow in the 1970s, delivering a gut-churning, heart-wrenching noir. With a charismatic hero who provides flashes of humor to lighten the dark landscape and a narrative enlivened by its Scottish dialect, this third in the series (following February's Son, 2019) belongs on the must-read list of every follower of Tartan noir.

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