February's Son

Written by Alan Parks

Narrated by Andrew McIntosh

The second thrilling installment in the Harry McCoy series

A man hangs himself in a neighborhood chapel. Bodies of young girls are being found in canals and rivers across the city with high levels of Mandrax in their bloodstream. McCoy is asked to watch over a colleague's niece, who has left home young and is running with a bad crowd in Glasgow. DS Wattie is attempting to become a sergeant. Drugs in Glasgow have gotten darker and more dangerous.

Glasgow, its music, and its inhabitants all have rough edges in this hard city fought over by gangs, organized crime, the forces of law and order, and ordinary people trying to get by.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: May 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684573615

Alan Parks

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. In 2022 the third book in the Harry McCoy series, Bobby March Will Live Forever, won the MWA Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original. Parks was born in Scotland, earned an M.A. in Moral Philosophy from the University of Glasgow, and still lives and works in the city he so vividly depicts in his Harry McCoy thrillers.

Reviews for February's Son

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

February’s Son by Alan Parks is the second book in his police procedural series featuring Detective Harry McCoy. Set in Glasgow during 1973, the story is both about a current set of grisly murders and about Harry McCoy’s troubled life – past and present. The mutilated bodies are the work of a well known gangster who appears to have gone off his meds and is spiralling downwards. Meanwhile Harry’s childhood best friend, Stevie Cooper, is competing for control of Glasgow’s underworld and also appears to know more about the murders than he should. Then when a ghost from their past shows up, they feel that they must finally retaliate. There is a lot going on in this book and the stories entwine and overlap but the author keeps control and delivers a harsh yet engrossing story. Harry is carrying a lot of pain around with him and he often counteracts his feelings with drugs and alcohol. He is far from perfect, but he does his best to stay on the right side of the law most of the time.I have enjoyed the first two books of this series and am looking forward to continuing on reading about Harry and his workmates and friends in the future.

[zmagic69 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow! Even better than the first book in the series!
Early 70’s, miserable winter in Glasgow, detective Harry McCoy is tracking a serial killer who is deeply disturbed , and Scotland’s miserable history of abuse at orphanages/Boys homes a situation he is all too familiar with.
This is a gritty dark book be a hell of a story from a excellent author.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Over recent years, Scottish Noir has become established as a major genre within crime fiction, and the works of Ian Rankin, Stuart MacBride and Val McDermid have become bestsellers all around the world. All three of those authors have favoured dark crimes committed against grisly settings, investigated by stalwart and pragmatic cops who are prepared to cross the customary lines of propriety and fair play in order to secure a result.Harry McCoy, protagonist of Alan Parks’ debut novel Bloody January, is another decidedly gritty detective who makes John Rebus or Logan McRae seem like Dixon of Dock Green. This book represents his second outing, following on year’s Bloody January, and transports us back to Glasgow in 1973, a city riven by crime where sectarian loyalties strike deeper and harder than anywhere else on mainland Britain.This novel picks up more or less where its predecessor left off, with McCoy returning to work after recovering from the injuries sustained at the end of the previous story. On his first day back, he is summoned to the top floor of a half-built tower block, where a corpse has been discovered. It is immediately clear that the victim had been tortured before being killed. It is equally clear that he is a successful footballer who had established himself as a regular in the Celtic side. As if that were not enough of a problem for the police, the dead footballer was also the fiancé of the daughter of the city’s most powerful crime supremo.McCoy sometimes seems almost to be fighting the wintry city itself, and the cold seemed to seep out of the book and engulf me as I read it. It has become rather a cliché now for fictional detectives to be at least as troubled as the criminals and victims among whom they function. McCoy is no exception, and he has enough emotional baggage to fill a freight wagon. It is also clear that he might struggle as much to spell ‘unassailable rectitude’ as he would to display it. His woes and angst are all too plausible, however, and his off-duty hours are spent drinking heavily, downing speed and consorting with prostitutes in a relentless cycle of dissolution. At the most basic level, the plot is grim, the setting is bleak and the characters are, for the most part, ghastly. The book is, however, utterly compelling. Parks has a straightforward style that snags the reader’s attention from the start, and won’t let go.

[linda.a. · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Publisher’s synopsis:Bodies are piling up with messages carved into their chests. Rival gangs are competing for control. New drugs have arrived in Glasgow, and they’ve brought a different kind of violence to the broken city. The law of the street is changing and demons from Detective McCoy’s past are coming back to haunt him.Can McCoy keep his head up for long enough to deliver justice?Set in Glasgow in 1973, this is the author’s second book in the Harry McCoy series and, although I think it would probably have been more satisfying had I read “Bloody January” first, I found there were enough clues about the main character’s backstory to be able to read this as a stand-alone novel.It’s clear from the start that McCoy is a haunted, deeply-troubled character who is not only struggling with his return to work after undergoing the statutory three counselling sessions which followed the traumatic, violent conclusion to his last case, but also with the effects of traumatic experiences during his childhood. With a taste for booze and drugs, as well as a tendency to use his fists when dealing with recalcitrant suspects, he is an archetypical detective from an era when bending the rules and police brutality were more likely to be tolerated. Stevie Cooper, a friend from his childhood who offered vital support and protection during some difficult times, also happens to be part of the Glasgow underworld, meaning that there are times when the detective finds that personal loyalties lead to a blurring of the boundaries between licit and illicit behaviour. As something of a counter-balance to the flawed detective, Wattie, a new and rather naïve young detective, often provides a more honourable, principled voice, acting as a brake on some of McCoy’s excesses. Although it’s apparent from the beginning who’s responsible for the brutal murders, the fact that he’s linked to the undisputed leader of Glasgow’s gangland, and that the first victim is the fiancé of this man’s daughter, means that the stakes are high in the search for the murderer. Will the police find him first or will he be found and dealt with by a father seeking to avenge his daughter’s loss? This “Tartan noir” story is told mainly from the viewpoint of Harry McCoy, but briefly interspersed with the main narrative are insights into the psychopathic personality of the murderer, the sadistic pleasure he takes in gratuitous violence and torture and his gradually deteriorating mental state. However, he is not the only one to use violence as a means to an end as so many of the characters, on both sides of the law, appear to regard it as the “lingua franca” of their interactions, making this a very dark and disturbing story to read … Tartan-noir rather than Scandi-noir! Although this is a well-written story which captures a highly atmospheric sense of time and place in a city rife with drugs, violence and criminal gangs, I definitely cannot describe it as an enjoyable read! There were times when I found it almost unbearable to continue reading the detailed, graphic descriptions of not only the brutal murders, but also the of the casual violence used by so many of the characters. At times it felt as though there was little difference between the behaviour of the criminals and of the police, with both sides resorting to violence, blackmail and other corrupt practices ... much of the justice meted out was definitely of the rough kind! However, I did find myself rooting for the main character and, even when I hated some of his behaviour, I at least felt able to understand why he made some of the decisions he did! The development of the plot is satisfyingly full of twists and turns and themes contained within the story include reflections on mental illness and mental health, and the long-term effects of historic physical and sexual abuse. Each of the characters is well-developed and although the moral ambiguity of many of them (police and criminals alike!), their crude language and their gratuitous violence frequently made this a disturbing story to read, they felt very much “of their time”. I particularly enjoyed discovering the long-term significance of McCoy’s relationships with Stevie Cooper and Chief Inspector Murray and why each is such a key figure in his life. It’s difficult to go into any detail without introducing spoilers but their various interactions gave the story a psychological integrity which I found impressive ... to the extent that I now want to read the third book in the series, “Bobby March will Live Forever”, because I want to know how these relationships continue to develop!With thanks to Readers First for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[miss.mesmerized · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It’s been three weeks since the events of that bloody January. Harry McCoy is about to return to work with the Glasgow police hoping for some more quiet times. But when Murray calls him in early, he knows that it must be serious: a young football stars has been found, not just killed but also mutilated. It is obvious quickly that his fame as sports stars wasn’t the reason for his killing, it is much more his engagement with the daughter one of Glasgow’s underworld bosses. And then it all gets very personal: Harry’s past is going to catch up with him and the eager policeman loses control.I already really liked the first instalment of the Harry McCoy series, but the second was actually even better. This is especially due to the fact that the protagonist gets more contours, becomes more human and thus his character and decision making becomes understandable. The development and insight in this character was for me the strongest and most interesting in reading “February’s Son”.Again the murder case is quite complex and all but foreseeable. Different cases are actually linked and it takes some time until you understand their connection and their particular relevance for McCoy. The whole series is set in 1973 which means there is a fairly different atmosphere in comparison to many novels set today. Glasgow is an all but friendly town constantly at war, the police’s job is to prevent the worst, not to take care of minor misdoings and therefore, they sometimes need to find less legal ways to keep the upper hand. The tone is harsh at times, certainly nothing for the highly sensitive. Fights are part of everyday life and a bleeding nose is nothing to worry too much about. Yet, this all fits perfectly and creates an authentic atmosphere of a time long gone. It will not be easy to outstrip this novel with a third.