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 . . .

My final review of 2017 needed to be something a little bit special, and the good news is that Bloody January by Alan Parks is exactly that. Time for an old school crime novel set during the 1970s in a city with a notorious reputation for violence.

I’ve long since held the belief that the best detectives are the ones who are a complete shambles as a human being. Harry McCoy is no exception. He has a childhood friend who is a psychopathic gangster (more on him in a minute), a relationship with alcohol and recreational drugs that borders on a problem, and an easy-going attitude towards organised crime. Peel back the layers and you discover there is more to McCoy than his many faults. He is a mess, but for good reason. McCoy is also unrelenting when it comes to solving problems. He has a tenacity that feels palpable. Here is a man that will do anything to uncover the truth, no matter the cost. There is also an inherent sadness to the character that I think helps to explain a lot of his motivations. A traumatic event in his past has left a hole in his life, and he has nothing but his work and his various addictions to keep him going.

It is up to McCoy to try and understand the reasons behind a seemingly random act of violence on a busy street. How does this crime tie in with an upper class family called the Dunlops. In a time before internet searches and social media, it’s up to the detective to rely on good old-fashioned police work. For McCoy that involves dealing with all manner of low lives. Alan Parks’ Glasgow is populated with madams and junkies, porn merchants and drug dealers. To uncover the truth, our hero has to try and navigate his way through all the corruption and vice the city has to offer.

Stevie Cooper is McCoy’s oldest friend. Cooper is a violent gang leader who runs a good chunk of the organised time throughout Glasgow. The two men have been friends for years and they each view one another as a useful contact. The problem is that Cooper is getting drawn more and more into the drugs trade, and this is starting to seriously affect the decisions he is making. Important rule of thumb for drug dealers – don’t start sampling your own product. You learn some of their shared history and Cooper was always unpredictable; hard drugs just make him more and more deranged as the plot unfolds. Unfortunately, Cooper is about the only person that McCoy can trust.

I grew up just outside Glasgow and it will always hold a special place in my heart. The industrial heritage of the city has led to a reputation of it being a bit rough and ready, and to be honest that is probably merited. That said, I don’t think I have ever been anywhere that is quite so full of life. Growing up I had the distinct impression that there was a dark side to the town that was always there, just out of sight. It feels like Alan Parks’ writing shines a light directly on that dark underbelly of criminal activity.

For the curious amongst you I can confirm all the colloquialisms, and swearing, are bang on the money. Actually, this should probably act as a word of warning. If you are easily offended by strong language, pretty graphic violence and some particularly adult themes then you may wish to look elsewhere for your crime fix. Personally, I loved it all. The entire novel encapsulates just a single week, and as the investigation progresses, events just get darker and darker.

I really enjoyed Bloody January, in fact it was a late contender for my book of the year. It made me feel strangely nostalgic. Alan Parks has perfectly captured a snapshot of a city during a period of intense change. For me, when it comes to crime the darker the better. Please tell me there is going to be another Harry McCoy novel, I’d read it immediately.

1970s Glasgow requires a soundtrack with a good sized chunk of gritty soul. I can think of no one better than a 1970s band from Glasgow to accompany Bloody January. Pretty much anything by Stone the Crows fits perfectly. Maggie Bell’s bluesy vocals are perfection. My personal preference would be for the album Teenage Licks, but feel free to choose another. Take it from someone who knows, Glasgow is all about the gritty.

Bloody January is published by Canongate and is available from 28th December. Highly recommended. I’m going to buy my dad a copy, he’ll love it. I think part of him still lives in 1970s Glasgow.

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 sampled the wares of the city's drug, crime and prostitution rings, and be on speaking terms with the people who operate them. If he didn't partake of what these places had to offer, he'd hardly be of much use as a police officer trying to keep a lid on anything bigger blowing up.

Blowing up however is exactly what happens in the particularly miserable January of 1973. Despite a tip-off from an influential inmate in one of the prisons, Harry McCoy is unable to prevent a young woman being shot in broad daylight at a bus station, nor is he able to prevent the killer taking his own life, leaving the force with a mystery. A subsequent autopsy reveals some worrying signs of bruising on the woman's body, and it's not long before another dead woman turns up in a similar state of abuse.

Other noir tropes are very much in evidence. McCoy has a habit of getting beat-up by thugs in dark alleys, he gets to sleep with some femmes fatales. His ex-wife Angela is now married to the right-hand man of the rich and influential shipyard owning Dunlop family, and there's a lot of painful history there. The Dunlops inevitably have some very exotic tastes and a wayward son who likes to indulge them to a dangerous degree. With the decline of the shipyards, the Dunlops are looking to expand into new ventures of dubious legality, but their activities - and the nature of corruption rife within the police force - make them just as untouchable as the criminal gang lords.

Parks certainly evokes the period and the setting well, unflinching in language and situation that reflects the brutal reality on the streets, but Is there a meaningful underlying purpose to all this noir styling and the use of the 1970s? Well, Glasgow in the age of Glam rock is certainly one way of highlighting the divisions between rich and poor by contrasting surface glamour with the underlying reality. David Bowie even makes a cameo appearance in Ziggy Stardust guise in the novel, but it's not gratuitous, delving into the seedy backstage activities. Similarly, in Glasgow, some rich families are keen to present a respectable image that hides something much uglier; while the ordinary people are caught in a web of exploitation, the streets reeking of poverty, unemployment and down-and-outs, living in hovels and getting drawn into a network of drinking, drugs and prostitution.

As the backstage goings-on at the Bowie concert also indicate, there's another reason for the choice of the 1970s setting, and it's definitely not nostalgia. Or maybe it is nostalgia as far as McCoy is concerned, for as bad as crime is in Glasgow in 1973, it's about to get much worse. Heroin is starting to make its appearance on the streets, and with will come greater gang violence over supply and distribution, breeding a more dangerous type of criminal, and it will be the more vulnerable elements of society that will pay the price. This is an impressive debut by Alan Parks, a 70s' noir drenched in atmosphere and character detail, with a very real and black theme at its heart.

**4.5 STARS**

I seem to be saying this a lot just recently, but for fear of repeating myself, I have to say what an excellent debut novel this is! Alan Parks brings 70's Glasgow brilliantly to life, with this raw and gritty Scottish crime novel.

It's January 1973, it's snowing, it's freezing cold, but it's not going to keep this particular killer from increasing the body count.

A young man shoots a young woman dead in a busy Glasgow street, he makes no attempt to conceal what he's done, on the contrary, with a smile on his face he turns the gun on himself and commits suicide. Detective Harry McCoy is convinced it wasn't a random act of violence, and he guessed correctly, so, with his new partner Wattie, he begins an investigation that will take him from the brothels in the less salubrious areas of this city to a secret society run by one of the wealthiest families in Glasgow.

McCoy is your archetypal flawed Detective, he has many issues, and he's far from squeaky clean. He has friends in the underworld, people with power and control, these are real old school hard men, gangsters, they're sadistic, and nobody, not even McCoy, will stop them from achieving their aims.

Oh my! This was such a great read. The author has captured 70's Glasgow perfectly with a great sense of time and place. The dark, grim winter weather only adds to the bleak oppressive atmosphere. This was a very graphic novel - there are some particularly vicious characters leading to some brutal scenes, but this is how it was during that particular period, with its proliferation of gangsters, cops taking back handers, and hard drugs becoming more readily available, and our protagonist is no stranger to any of these! Excellent!

Thank you to Netgalley and Canongate Books for my ARC. I have given an honest review in exchange.

The language in this book really put me off. I know that it fits with Glasgow in the 70s but it was a bit excessive. I enjoyed the story and the writing but the swearing was too much.

Thank you to Netgalley and Cannongate Books for the chance to read and review this book

OAbsolutely Brilliant! This bleak and atmospheric debut Scottish Noir places Alan Parks firmly in the top league of crime writers. It is set in a 1970s Glasgow of hard men crime gangsters and corrupt cops, with all the plethora of the cruelty and brutality of the time. It is a dark tale where there could never be enough snow to cover the filth, vice, the rising body count, the misogyny and the beginnings of the toll that heroin starts to take on the people of Glasgow. Detective Harry McCoy finds himself in Barlinnie to be informed of the planned killing of a waitress, Lorna, who works at an upmarket restaurant. He manages to locate the girl, only to see her shot in front of him by a teenage boy who proceeds to turn the gun on himself. The informant is found with his tongue cut off and his throat slit in the showers of Barlinnie and nobody is talking.

Under an intense media focus, McCoy and his rookie partner, Wattie, haunt the streets of Glasgow and its criminal underbelly to try and get a handle on what happened and why. McCoy is a deeply flawed individual, with a penchant for drugs, prostitutes, drink and a close relationship with Stevie Cooper, a brutal crime boss with his fingers in many pies from drugs and gambling to prostitution. We slowly learn that Stevie protected Harry by taking brutal beatings in a abusive Catholic boys home. Their close shared past makes Harry Stevie's man, although he tries to temper the out of control Stevie when he can. Harry has put himself out to speak for the homeless 'the jakies' and earned their eternal gratitude. The case leads Harry to the powerful, ruthless and untouchable Dunlop family who know no boundaries when it comes to assuaging their deviant sexual proclivities. Harry is repeatedly warned to keep away from them. As Harry endures beating after beating, his heart and personal morality will not allow him to give up on trying to get some form of justice for the rising tide of the dead. Even if he has to go a roundabout, off the wall, way of achieving this by using his wit and cunning.

I sincerely hope that this is going to pan out into a series, I want the return of Harry McCoy. Alan Parks gives us the perfect antihero for the time and the place in Harry. Parks serves up an authentic picture of Glasgow, its people, the no go council estates, the culture, the poverty, the criminal rivalries, and the prejudice and attitudes of the period. Harry is a broken man, with a past he is haunted by, and a family he has lost. It is little wonder that he seeks the solace of drugs and drink to keep the demons away. Those looking for a moral protagonist should avoid this novel. However, if you are a crime noir aficionado, then this is a must read. A superb book that deserves to do well and which I cannot recommend highly enough. Many thanks to Canongate for an ARC.

i loved this book from the very start, the main character an anti hero cop with ties to the nastiest gangster in town trying to separate his friendship with a lifelong friend whilst hunting the perverted upper classes of early 70's Glasgow.. my kind of book in the city and time i grew up in.

It was a refreshing change to read a book set in the 1970s when policing was not just about DNA. My memories of Glasgow at that time are of going there to be bought a winter coat but the descriptions felt authentic enough and tally with my later experience of the city. I’m not adverse to a gritty, violent story but I don’t like reading about drug taking so I did struggle a bit here. To be honest ‘Detective’ McCoys behaviour was such that I feel he should be sacked immediately and probably jailed. With a background in policing it’s hard not to get distracted by little things that just don’t feel right as was the case here with the police office repeatedly referred to as the shop?!? I’m sure that McCoy will have his fans but I unfortunately am not one of them although full credit to the author for creating characters that evoked such strong feelings.

Not impressed by the liberal use of the C-word (however, it was probably in character for the types of people who were using it). It was also a little violent for my taste. Notwithstanding that, it was quite a good read - some of the characters were well drawn.

This was brilliant and I hope it's not a one off. The early 70s came back to life with care and attention to detail and the characters with all their flaws and negative traits were really believable. Cannot recommend this highly enough.

Detective Harry McCoy should have listened to his snitch. Now he’s sitting beside the body of a teenager who just killed himself after shooting a waitress in the middle of a busy Glasgow street. Harry doesn’t now it yet but things are about to get much worse. So much so that years from now they’ll still refer to it as Bloody January.

This is a dark police procedural that takes us back to 1973. Glasgow is a gritty, violent place with territorial crime bosses, bent cops & an established class system. There are 2 sets of rules…one for those with influence & another for those deemed disposable.

Harry falls somewhere in the middle. He’s an old school cop, struggling to adapt to changes within the department & society. While he works hard to put away the guilty, he has a soft spot for those who are down on their luck. He has his own set of rules when it comes to keeping the peace that includes a close relationship with hard man Stevie Cooper. Most of his colleagues figure Harry is in it for the perks but we come to learn it’s much more complex than that. Their history gradually unfolds as the main plot plays out & it gives us heartbreaking insight into Harry’s character.

The bodies continue to pile up over the course of a few weeks & everything seems to point toward the wealthiest family in Glasgow. Lord Dunlop is an arrogant, privileged man well known to Harry. His position comes with influence that reaches the highest levels of government & law enforcement. So it’s no surprise when Harry is duly warned: stay away from his Lordship & find another suspect.

Ah, but what fun would that be? Besides, Harry has been saddled with a shiny new partner named Wattie & someone has to teach him the ropes. And as Harry drags him down dark allies full of prostitutes, criminals & the homeless, Wattie’s eyes are well & truly opened.

I’m astonished this is a debut novel. It’s well paced with a narrative that perfectly evokes the setting. Scenes are full of the clothing, hairstyles & music of the day & that mixed with dialogue full of local vernacular leaves you in no doubt of the time or place. But just a heads up, there is plenty of violence & sexual abuse. It informs the plot lines & fits the story but some may find certain scenes upsetting.

This is a well written, atmospheric addition to the genre of tartan noir & if Harry should pop up in a book #2, I’ll be more than happy to go along for the ride.

Loved this book!
Unfortunately, I remember the1970’s very vividly – it really took me back.
This book is a realistic police procedural; with rich credible characters which is dark, gritty and bloody. Relentlessly readable and so well written I found it hard to believe it was a debut.
Set in 1970 Glasgow it is a deliciously dark read - I recommend locking the door and leaving the lights on!
I can’t wait to read a lot more of Detective Harry McCoy in the near future - please!
Thank you Net Galley and the Publisher for allowing me to read and review "Bloody January" by Alan Parks

Wow! What a debut novel! The story follows detective Harry McCoy set in the 1970's in dark, miserable Glasgow.
The pace was fast moving, full of twists and turns. Very well written, very graphic with lots of bad language which is fitting for the story. Definitely not for the faint hearted! I absolutely loved it, a gripping page turner which I really hope is the start of a fantastic series!
Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for my advance copy in return for an honest review.

A dark and gritty novel set in 70's Glasgow following Detective McCoy as he investigates the seemingly random shooting of a young girl and subsequent suicide of the young man who shot her. The case eventually leads McCoy and his rookie partner Wattie to a powerful criminal and several more deaths along the way.
I enjoyed this story although the main character McCoy was a hard-drinking, drug-taking, blase type who visits prostitutes in his spare time.
Hopefully the start of a series and captured the gritty realism of 1970's Glasgow very well.
Thanks to Netgalley for the advance review copy.

I enjoyed this book a lot. The setting in Glasgow added to the grittiness of the drama and I enjoyed reading about the old places and the redevelopment in the seventies, around the time the story is set. The actual story of the murder is very good but is overshadowed by the excellent back story of Harry. It is very gory and has graphically described violence which I found a bit too much at times but I did understand that it was integral to the plot and setting. An excellent gritty detective novel

really enjoyed this one. for a first novel, I was really impressed how this story took off and held my interest from the very first chapter. this is rough and tough Glasgow in the early 70's where crime is gritty and corruption abounds. Det McCoy gets the case of young man who shoots a young woman and then himself. he is joined by a rookie officer and they create a nice dynamic as they navigate criminals, bosses, hookers, the privileged , etc on their way to getting answers. McCoy is no saint himself as he associates with the underworld and their rulers. his tortured background is parsed out throughout the story. this is not for the faint of heart, it is gritty, there is liberal use of foul language and the crimes are quite sadistic. reminded me a bit of the original tartan noir tale Laidlaw by William McIlvanney. thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a review copy and this is definitely a series I will continue with as I look forward to what is next for these characters.

An average story. I guess it wasn't my cup of tea.

A great read. I really enjoyed this totally convincing picture of Glasgow in the 1970s, with all its violence and grit - does for Scotland's second city what Ian Rankin did for Edinburgh with his Rebus crime novels.

This is a very good debut novel, set in Glasgow in January 1973. It's well written and it captures the time and place extremely well. McCoy's Glasgow is a cold, dark, miserable place populated by violent criminals, drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes, the lost and the dispossessed. It certainly isn't a nice, cosy detective novel. It's gritty, dark and bloody.

It opens with Detective Harry McCoy making his way through Barlinnie prison having been summoned there (apparently) by an inmate, who tells McCoy that a girl called Lorna is going to be killed the next day in the city centre.

Despite managing to identify 'Lorna' while waiting to speak to her she is shot dead, in front of McCoy and his new sidekick Wattie, by a teenage boy who then shoots himself. Later that day, they find out the prisoner who told McCoy about the girl being killed has been found in the prison showers with his throat slit. No witnesses of course.

There is not much to go on to link the deaths. No obvious connection but McCoy has contacts in the criminal underworld and his enquiries eventually lead him to the home of the very wealthy Dunlop family. Despite any suspicions he might have, he is ordered from those higher up to stay away from the Dunlops. The whole thing reeks of corruption and the possibility that the rich and well-connected are above the law.

Like many fictional detectives, Harry McCoy is somewhat flawed. Possibly more than most. He is potentially an alcoholic, uses recreational drugs, frequents prostitutes and associates with criminals. I'm not sure if I've read a book where the main character seems to get so many 'doings' or severe beatings and yet still manages to keep his job and continue to solve cases. There are strong references to problems in his past but we don't know the whole story. He's known gangster Stevie Cooper since they were boys and gets information and contacts through him but at what cost?

'Wattie' has been transferred from another area to experience big city police work, and is assigned to McCoy to shadow him and learn the ropes. He's young, bright and keen. McCoy didn't want to be lumbered with someone but had no choice in the matter. Wattie has really been thrown in at the deep end with three deaths on his first day out with McCoy.

Harry McCoy doesn't have many redeeming features and yet there is something interesting about him. I'm hoping this will be the first book in a series and that maybe in time he will get his act together and start to sort out his personal life.

An excellent violent, dark, crime novel.

I enjoyed this book, It was fast moving. It had quite a few twists and turns. The characters were well defined. The usual damaged detective going against the advice of senior officers, but determined to see justice done. Well written, but not for the faint hearted. There are a lot of four-letter words in it, although they are appropriate to the content. They are normal police/criminal dialogue .

Set in atmospheric Glasgow in the 1970s. Detective Harry Mc Coy is trying to solve a series of murders. The atmosphere is very well created and the writing is so good it is easy to imagine yourself there. The language and the violence in the book add to the realism. This is a page turner of a story and Mc Coy is an unforgettable character. I hope there are more books about him.