Alan parks
Agent: Isobel Dixon
Assistant: Finlay Charlesworth
Alan Parks worked in the music industry for over twenty years before turning to crime writing.
His debut BLOODY JANUARY was shortlisted for the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, FEBRUARY’S SON was nominated for an Edgar Award, BOBBY MARCH WILL LIVE FOREVER won the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original, the Prix Mystère de la critique in the foreign fiction category, and was shortlisted for the Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel and THE APRIL DEAD was shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year. The fifth Harry McCoy book, MAY GOD FORGIVE, was published in April 2022 and won the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year 2022. It has also been shortlisted for the 2023 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and longlisted for the 2023 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award . The Harry McCoy series is optioned for television.
Alan was born in Scotland and attended The University of Glasgow where he was awarded a M.A. in Moral Philosophy. He still lives and works in the city as well as spending time in London.
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TO DIE IN JUNE
UK, Canongate, 2023
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.
MAY GOD FORGIVE
Crime, 384 pages
Canongate, April 2022
Glasgow is a city in mourning. An arson attack on a hairdresser's has left five dead. Tempers are frayed and sentiments running high.
When three youths are charged the city goes wild. A crowd gathers outside the courthouse but as the police drive the young men to prison, the van is rammed by a truck, and the men are grabbed and bundled into a car. The next day, the body of one of them is dumped in the city centre. A note has been sent to the newspaper: one down, two to go.
Detective Harry McCoy has twenty-four hours to find the kidnapped boys before they all turn up dead, and it is going to mean taking down some of Glasgow's most powerful people to do it . . .
THE APRIL DEAD
UK, Canongate, 2021
NO ONE WILL FORGET . . .
In a grimy flat in Glasgow, a homemade bomb explodes, leaving few remains to identify its maker.
Detective Harry McCoy knows in his gut that there'll be more to follow. The hunt for a missing sailor from the local US naval base leads him to the secretive group behind the bomb, and their disturbing, dominating leader.
On top of that, McCoy thinks he's doing an old friend a favour when he passes on a warning, but instead he's pulled into a vicious gang feud. And in the meantime, there's word another bigger explosion is coming Glasgow's way - so if the city is to survive, it'll take everything McCoy's got . . .
BOBBY MARCH WILL LIVE FOREVER
UK, Canongate, 2020
WHO IS TO BLAME WHEN NO ONE IS INNOCENT?
The papers want blood.
The force wants results.
The law must be served, whatever the cost.
July 1973. The Glasgow drugs trade is booming and Bobby March, the city’s own rock-star hero, has just overdosed in a central hotel.
Alice Kelly is thirteen years old, lonely. And missing.
Meanwhile the niece of McCoy’s boss has fallen in with a bad crowd and when she goes AWOL, McCoy is asked – off the books – to find her.
McCoy has a hunch. But does he have enough time?