Rating: 4/5
Review:
Another very good instalment
This has been a very good series so far and I think that Bobby March
Will Live Forever is probably the best so far.
It is summer 1973
this time and a 15-year-old girl is missing. McCoy is excluded from
the investigation by a rival who hates him, but the case he is
working on eventually becomes tangled up with the missing girl,
leading him again into the world of Glasgow’s gangs and major
criminals and even to Belfast at the height of the Troubles. It’s
a good, involving story in which McCoy’s ambivalent relationship
with Steve Cooper plays a significant part and which is one of the
very good things about the series.
The summer setting
means that the book has a slightly less oppressive feel than its
predecessors, although there is still a lot of gruesome violence and
a menacing air is always present. As always, one really fine feature
is Alan Parks’s evocation of the atmosphere of 1970s Glasgow, both
the place itself and the period. Period attitudes are well
portrayed, including what we would now see as gross police corruption
but was just the way things were done then and his characters are
extremely well drawn and believable.
I have to say that
the plot relies on a couple of pretty outrageous coincidences and the
climax gets a bit silly. There are some holes – such as McCoy
taking a hideous beating including several powerful kicks full in the
face in which his “nose bursts,” but a day later he is perfectly
fit and no-one so much as comments on any damage to his face.
Nonetheless, this is well enough written for these things not to
matter too much and I found Bobby March Will Live Forever a
thoroughly gripping, enjoyable read. Warmly recommended, and I’m
looking forward to the next in the series.
(My thanks to
Canongate Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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