The list of characters grows exponentially from the opening pages, and relationships among them and with Harry McCoy are filled with intricacies. In terms of plot, this is by far the most complex of the four McCoy novels I have read. McCoy meets a criminal at the Botanic Gardens. The result can be effective in eliminating hard criminals, but the level of violence and its description is often repugnant, even stomach-churning. Harry, given his own difficult upbringing and his own lack of real love and guidance throughout his childhood, is a tough man with a tough background, and he can sometimes make connections with crime bosses which the typical police detective has no chance to achieve. Rival crime families operate independently of the police, but even within the police department, different groups of free-thinking officers often enforce their own unwritten rules and behaviors. McCoy is no straight arrow, and though he does believe in justice for all, it may just as often be justice that he defines and negotiates on his own, dispensing it without the knowledge of the police hierarchy. Set during ten days in May, 1974, the novel includes the convoluted backgrounds of the characters, especially of Harry McCoy, whose life is both sad and fraught with uncertainties. No one knows who she is.Ī “panda car,” the nickname for police cars.Īll of this activity – three different death scenes – and twenty or so characters associated with them are packed into the first two days of action and the first fifty pages of this novel, a challenging introduction to an increasingly complex set of mysteries which give no indication, at first, of whether they will overlap or connect. A young girl, between fifteen and seventeen in age, has been found strangled on the outskirts of a cemetery. The following day, McCoy meets with his young partner Wattie and they have a third new case to deal with. Later that day, with hardly a moment to breathe between emergencies, McCoy, still sick, finds himself involved in another new and grisly scene – a “suicide” at a special housing site for “single men with nowhere else to go.” A man has jumped or been pushed from a third floor roof, and McCoy, talking with some of the locals, learns that this was not an accident. A mysterious “estate car” pulls up, and the suspects are transferred from the police van to the estate car from which they are helped to escape the scene. Suddenly, a speeding truck crashes into the police van which has been transporting the arson suspects jail. Even after his release, he is heavily dependent on bottles of Pepto-Bismol for relief. Detective Harry McCoy has just returned to work with the Glasgow Police after being hospitalized for a month for a bleeding ulcer, due in part to his drinking, smoking, and hard living. Three young men have been apprehended for starting the fire, and the growing mob, many of whom are women, wants them hanged.
Three women and one young child have been killed in the fire, and a second child has been hospitalized for injuries.
#Forgiva reviews series#
May God Forgive, Alan Parks’s fifth novel in this Tartan noir series featuring Detective Harry McCoy, opens with a riot in response to an arson fire at a hair salon. Columbus, eating Chicken Balmoral at a charity dinner and exchanging chit-chat with the Archbishop. One minute you’re slicing someone’s nose off with an open razor, next minute your’e in the Knights of St. All the old boys were scrambling about, desperate to get legit.
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