Good police procedural. Really enjoyed it. Highly recommended. Hadn't read any by this author but would read more by this author.

A Harry Macoy thriller that certainly packed a punch. Totally ruthless and unforgettable experience. Everyone should read this book.

Noone writes Glaswegian crime fiction quite like Alan Parks; I couldnt look up from the page until I'd read every last word of the book. Another cracking police procedural for Harry McCoy, with double bluffs, twists and turns coming at you every step of the way. Bring on the next instalment

Although I haven't read any others in this series, I felt this book read well as a standalone.
I loved it. It was that warming mix of McIlvanny's Laidlaw yet with an edge of its own. Love MCCoy as a character - a great maverick Scottish cop with a consciece and the inevitable hard choices to be made. I was immediately transported back to the 1970s with a nostalgia that those of a certain age are entitled too. But the complex web of gangsters fighting for supremecy, hidden secrets and religious fervour drew m in. Brilliant book

To Die In June is the 6th Harry McCoy thriller by Alan Parks, I am thrilled to be starting off the @randomthingstours today on publication day.
June 1975 Glasgow: Harry McCoy and Wattie have been transferred to Possil Station temporarily on Murray's orders as he suspects corruption in the local cops there. McCoy in his wisdom keeps this from Wattie who is becoming a good cop under the watchful gaze of his partner.
With case after case piling up, they are kept busy looking into unexplained deaths of down and outs on the Glasgow streets and are drawn into an unsettling case of a pastors missing child from a cult like church The Church of Christ's Suffering. But there is no real proof that this child actually exists...
To add an extra spanner in the works, McCoys childhood friend and local gang boss has decided to expand his empire into McCoys new patch. A fact that Harry has to accept and turn a blind eye too with everything else that's going on.
It's a busy time for McCoy, he's increasingly concerned about finding his father who lives on the streets and is also fitting in time with his new girlfriend and trying to find a birthday present for Watties wee Dougie.
This is another cracking read from Alan Parks, I am a huge fan of these books which of course can be read as standalones but once you've read one, you'll want to go back to the beginning of the series and follow Harry McCoys story from the start. Roll on July!

I loved every book I read in this series as they're all tense thriller, well plotted novel featuring solid mysteries and well rounded characters.
This one was poignant and gripping, it surprised me and kept me turning pages
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I couldn't put this book down. It is the first I have read in the series and will now go back and read them all. Excellent story, excellent characters. Has a real feel of the 70s about it. Hard now to realise how policing was in that time. Highly recommend

If you love dark, gritty, emotional books with a great plot you need to read this series.

A woman enters a Glasgow police station to report her son missing, but no record can be found of the boy. When Detective Harry McCoy, seconded from the cop shop across town, discovers the family is part of the cultish Church of Christ's Suffering, he suspects there is more to Michael's disappearance than meets the eye.

Meanwhile reports arrive of a string of poisonings of down-and-outs across the city. The dead are men who few barely notice, let alone care about - but, as McCoy is painfully aware, among this desperate community is his own father.I

I must admit it took me a few chapters to get into this book but once I did wow! I could not put it down! So, so good and I can't wait to see what Harry does next.

This latest in the McCoy series does not disappoint. Great sense of the Scottish milieu, fascinating characters and a very believable picture of the police investigation. Highly recommended.

To die in June by Alan Paris is a Glasgow police thriller set in the 1970’s, Detective Harry McCoy is the main character.
Detective Harry McCoy has been seconded from his usual police station to another to root out police corruption in that station.
A woman calls into the police station to report her son missing, unfortunately there is no record of him ever being born. The woman is part of the cultish Church of Christ’s Suffering and Harry suspects that there are strange things happening within this Church of whom the woman’s husband is the minister.
There are also deaths within the down and outs of the city and it would appear someone is out to kill them but the police didn’t suspect foul play.
There are all sorts of inter gang related squabbles and more serious incidents for Harry to contend with. Then of course there is the police corruption matter to investigate.
An interesting look at policing in Glasgow in the 1970’s.
Highly recommended

This the latest in the series of the McCoy series in the dark and murky streets of early 1970's Glasgow and McCoy has to deal with Alcoholics dying and other things and as we delve deeper into the Glasgow underworld . Parks doesn't disappoint as he portrays the dark side of policing

Alan Parks continues his strong run of crime novels with the sixth entry in the series, To Die in June. It's some gritty 1970s tartan noir with a compelling mystery and large dollops of violence and corruption. It would be very easy for Harry McCoy, the main character, to be written as a generic hard-nosed cop with little real characterisation. To the novel's credit, he is surprisingly vulnerable and complex: part saint, part sinner. If I had to question anything about the book, it would be McCoy's investigation ability, which seems to rest mostly on being at the right place at the right time, and the John Wick quality of being knocked about incessantly without ever seeming to experience lasting consequences. These are faults which can be forgiven for the fast-moving pace and intrigue of the plot

Six books in and I'm still yet to feel any danger of being let down. Roll on July!

Life is complicated for Detective Harry McCoy. He has been sent to another station with a mission to look into corruption, his father is struggling with his alcoholism, someone is killing the down-and-outs, a woman reports her child as missing and turf wars are about to erupt. on the positive side, he has an unexpected romance to deal with.
Parks is putting together a really impressive oeuvre with his Glaswegian Noir novels. Here the setting in the1970s is pitch perfect, casual references to fashion and music as well as authentic slang ground the narrative. McCoy is a great anti-hero but with ever increasing morals and the plotlines are wonderfully obtuse and yet tie in, offer some completion and leave the door ajar from episode 7.

My second in this excellent series which again I have to say is not my genre of choice. Neither is the era a time I particularly enjoy reading about so all credit to the author for once more persuading me to stick with it. The writing is just excellent and I love how Wattie is developing into a much stronger force in this book from my last.
I have to be in the mood for this gritty style but once I start I can’t stop reading.

In To Die In June, Alan Parks releases the sixth novel in the urbane and gritty Harry McCoy series detailing Glasgow policing in the 1970s. Along with a returning McCoy, who is still smoking and drinking a bit too much, are McCoy’s fellow detective Wattie, long-time violent gangster Stevie Cooper, and other previously introduced characters.

Under the innocent auspices of a temporary move, McCoy and Wattie have been transferred to another police station, with only McCoy knowing the true reason. McCoy has been tasked with the covert investigation of police corruption and ordered not to inform anyone, including Wattie. McCoy then uses Wattie’s ignorance as cover to continue his investigation of other detectives suspected of serious corruption.

Though McCoy’s dating life has taken an upturn with a woman many feel obligated to inform him is above his standing, as usual, he still is operating under a full plate of stress and turmoil. Not only that, while his loyal sidekick Wattie continues to blossom as a detective, each day it seems Wattie grows more and more disenchanted and independent largely due to McCoy’s practice of not sharing information when it comes to their investigations.

At the same time, McCoy and Wattie become involved in the inquiry into the deaths of homeless alcoholics many believe is simply due to a bad batch of homemade poisonous alcohol. With only the main complainant being an unreliable alcoholic transient, even McCoy, the son of an alcoholic vagrant himself, is skeptical of the man’s belief the deaths are due to murder.

Adding even more turmoil to McCoy’s life is Cooper and his continued attempt to grow his criminal empire, which includes his sociopathic-like demands for McCoy to provide him aid in his sprawling criminal endeavors.

And if this isn’t enough for the two, a troubled, possibly mentally ill mother married to a cult-like influential minister reports a missing son that may or may not even exist.

Throughout six novels, Parks has established a progressive nature to the depth and growth of his characters, which allows them to remain interesting and compelling while spinning tales devoid of making readers suspend reasonable belief in his stories.

Like other authors portraying policing and crime in the 1970s, Parks' tales capture a time of gritty and rough brutality that does not become gratuitous or exaggerated.

To Die in June is highly recommended to fans that enjoy such tales and other authors such as Adrian McKinty, Ian Rankin, and Joseph Knox.

Netgalley provided an ARC upon the promise of a fair review and is currently available for purchase.

This review was originally published at MysteryandSuspense.com.

Please note, To Die in June is book six in an ongoing series. It’s possible this review may contain minor spoilers for those of you who haven’t read books one to five. Consider yourselves duly warned.

A woman enters a Glasgow police station to report her son missing, but no record can be found of the boy. When Detective Harry McCoy, seconded from the cop shop across town, discovers the family is part of the cultish Church of Christ’s Suffering, he suspects there is more to Michael’s disappearance than meets the eye.

Meanwhile reports arrive of a string of poisonings of down-and-outs across the city. The dead are men who few barely notice, let alone care about – but, as McCoy is painfully aware, among this desperate community is his own father.

Even as McCoy searches for the missing boy, he must conceal from his colleagues the real reason for his presence – to investigate corruption in the station. Some folk pray for justice. Detective Harry McCoy hasn’t got time to wait.

Working on the assumption that each Harry McCoy novel is going to contain a month of the year in the title, with To Die In June we have reached the halfway point in this series. Alan Parks’ latest slice of 1970s-flavoured Scottish crime fiction is another exceptional addition to the existing catalogue. I’m pleased to report there are no signs of things slowing down yet. Glasgow remains a chaotic melting pot of organised crime, religious intolerance and good old-fashioned violence.

Six years down the line from when we first met him, Harry McCoy is still a reasonably, dedicated cop and a shambles as a human being. The traumas of his childhood continue to cast a long shadow. Each new case heightens the realisation that the past will continue to hold sway over his life until he confronts it. I suspect that when this inevitable moment comes it is going to be particularly explosive. McCoy isn’t always the subtlest of men when it comes to resolving problems.

We’ve reached the point where there is a well-established continuity and a sense of familiarity with the characters. Harry, Wattie, Stevie Cooper and Jumbo all feel well-rounded, fleshed out and human. It’s a credit to the author that I can picture each one of them so easily. I love that Stevie Cooper is an out-and-out villain but you can’t help but like him. I’m sure we’d get along famously over a pint of Tennent’s, as long as I stayed on his good side.

I think I can now confidently say that this my favourite series of novels at the moment. It might sound funny but even though To Die in June falls squarely into the crime genre it still makes me look back at my shabby, old home town through rose-tinted spectacles. Every reader needs to find a series of books that make them feel like this. Parks’ visceral, evocative writing gets me in the gut every time. He just has to mention a shop or a pub and memories come flooding back. Each new Harry McCoy novel is a dark-themed love letter to the places and people that make Glasgow the unique place that it is.

The story ends on a suitably downbeat note as threads from other books are woven expertly into the narrative. I’m left with the question, what do the fates have in store for the Detective Inspector? I can’t wait to find out.

To Die in June is published by Canongate and is available now. I cannot recommend it enough. I would suggest checking out Harry’s previous cases before though, if you haven’t already.

Regular readers of The Eloquent Page are aware that I like to suggest a musical accompaniment to partner with every book I read*. For this series, I’ve taken that one step further. Not only does every novel in the Harry McCoy series get a recommendation they are also decade appropriate and, if that was enough, the artists are also all Scottish. To continue this tradition To Die in June has been paired with Hair of the Dog** by Nazareth.

*Like some sort of crazed, fiction-fuelled book sommelier.

**Trust me, this latest addition to the list is a real winner. Track one has Harry’s name written all over it. Heck, it was even released in the year the book was set. Never let it be said I dont go the extra mile for you guys.

This was a good police procedural story set in Glasgow with a traditional gruff detective with a personal involvement in the case in hand. I enjoyed the plot and the characters were well written in the main. However the book was set in 1975 and I don't think that it was either necessary or done well. I found a few anachronisms and I don't know what it added to the plot. I kept thinking about this and it distracted me from the story. Aside from that it was a good read.

It is time for my annual trip back to 1970’s Glasgow to reunite with Harry McCoy, Wattie, Stevie Cooper (McCoy’s oldest friend and one of Glasgow’s biggest gangsters) and Jumbo – Cooper’s garden-loving dogsbody. There are other characters I can expect to pop up as I dip back into the world Alan Parks has created (albeit that world is Glasgow of yester-year) but I always know these familiar faces will command my full attention until I reach the last page of the book. I seldom know when a new book is due out but I am always looking out for the next book by Alan Parks and I’ve never been disappointed with the stories he spins.

To Die in June is the sixth McCoy thriller and events are set during the heat of the 1975 summer. It begins with a missing child. A young boy is not in the family home when his mother comes down the stairs in the morning. She rushes to the police station, hysterical and demanding help. McCoy initiates an immediate search of the area but when he visits the family home to speak with the woman’s husband he is told there is no missing child. The search is called off and McCoy’s standing with his new colleagues at Possil police station dips even further than he could have anticipated.

Possil is McCoy and Wattie’s new home. There are changes taking place – Glasgow Police is becoming Strathclyde Police and while the transitions for the force are phasing in McCoy and the increasingly capable Wattie have been relocated. Their relationship with their new colleauges is fractious but for McCoy there is an opportunity to align himself with the other officers stationed at Possil but to do so will mean turning a blind eye to some of their activities and even applying a strong arm, when necessary, to get the outcomes needed. There will be a share of any spoils if he does and with his chaotic personal life seeming to take a turn for the better – McCoy is now in an unexpected relationship with one of Scotland’s leading actors and even McCoy is realising he needs to smarten up a little to be seen with her. This burgeoning relationship leads to some wonderful cameos, particularly early in the story when McCoy finds himself at a swanky Scottish Awards dinner.

But To Die in June isn’t all about sipping wine at posh functions. Out on the streets of Glasgow it looks like someone is giving the rough sleepers a toxic concoction to drink. At least that’s what McCoy believes. His colleagues are quick to point out that it is not unusual for the less fortunate citizens to start drinking anything they can get their hands on and early deaths are not uncommon given the toxins they regularly pour down their throats. Regular readers will know McCoy’s own father is one of the homeless souls and McCoy’s sensitivity to the plight of the homeless is not somthing his colleagues are quite so quick to give time to. But McCoy is concerned when his father’s drinking friends are telling him some of their number are dying after drinking a particularly toxic mixture. Wattie trys to convince McCoy he is reading too much into a few random deaths but McCoy isn’t so quickly convinced and the time he spends looking for a link between these deaths is putting a strain on his relationship with Wattie who is trying to cover the official investigations which the pair should be concentrating on.

As we have come to expect from Alan Parks there are critical events bubbling away and their importance may not always be apparent to the reader. Until suddently that subtle bubbling explodes into a very big deal and McCoy has a huge problem on his hands. That’s when you realise how smoothly Parks has sneaked some really important clues into the story, the very best sleight of hand, and McCoy’s life is in turmoil again. Alan Parks just keeps getting better and better – every new book feels more assured and that’s from a point where he was already setting a very high bar.

Glasgow never felt more unpredictable and it’s the dirty, rough city of old. There’s rival gangs buslting for superiority, gangsters trying to establish “legitimate” business interests, a religious group to be investigated (forcing McCoy to quash his natural distrust of all things faith-related), unhelpful and unethical police officers working to their own agenda. McCoy walks a dangerous path between these factions and he remains one of the very best protagonists in crime fiction at this time.

To Die In June is a five star read. The Harry McCoy series should be required reading for anyone calling themself a fan of Crime Fiction.

It’s June 1975 in Glasgow and DI Harry McCoy has plenty on his hands. There’s the suicide of the wife of Reverend West of the Church of Christ’s Suffering, a woman who believed the son she miscarried nine years ago is still alive. Could there be any truth is this? Then there’s the torture and murder of Malky McCormack, a fence who maybe knew too much, Stevie Cooper’s gleeful decision to start a war in Possil on aging rival Archie Andrews, and also the apparent poisoning of homeless down and outs, some of whom were pals of McCoy’s Dad. At least by the third drinker’s death he has Phyllis on side ready to conduct a post mortem and the results are shocking. All this whilst under strict instruction by Chief Inspector Murray to infiltrate the Friday club of bent officers at the Possil station where he and Detective Watson have been seconded whilst keeping poor old Wattie in the dark, making new girlfriend the popular actress Margo Lindsay happy and hopefully not giving himself another ulcer into the bargain. And this is just the start of a story of several threads, all of which are set to turn much darker and more sinister before the month is out.
Harry McCoy is known all over Glasgow, good and bad places, good and bad people. Sometimes this is why he ends up caught between them, and this story is no exception, seeing him once again trying to do the right thing and keep everyone happy, even if it’s not strictly by the book. I would recommend reading this series in order to understand properly the dynamic and shared history between Harry and Stevie Cooper. Many of the old faces, like Jumbo, Alec, Iris and Sister Jimmy are back again, together with Wattie, Murray, Phyllis and of course Stevie himself, and this time there is less by way of introduction or explanation of the history between them all. The grim poverty of some of the back streets and pubs in Glasgow and their occupants is tangible and excellently portrayed, and the characters, themselves like Frank and Gerry for example, are beautifully and very poignantly drawn. I have been a huge fan of this dark, atmospheric and totally absorbing series right from the very start and it just gets better and better with each new story. I cannot wait to see what July brings.

Only the third detective McCoy book I have read but still enjoyed it.
When homeless men in Glasgow start to die Harry is worried for the safety of his down and out dad.
A women with ties to a religious cult comes into the police station to report her son missing.
Are there any links?
Read and find out.