Bloody January (A Harry McCoy Thriller)

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The Drift, her autobiographical spoken word show, was part of the National Theatre of Scotland’s 2019 season and Black History Month 2019. When a teenage boy shoots a young woman dead in the middle of a busy Glasgow street and then commits suicide, Detective Harry McCoy is sure of one thing. The case involves a vivid selection of Glasgow's characters, from the very wealthy who consider themselves above the law to those poor and hopeless at the very underbelly of life. HIGHLY inappropriate and often bloody awful, it was the norm, rarely questioned and mostly accepted back then. General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Mikhail Gorbachev and Defence Minister Dmitry Yazov asserted that military law was necessary to thwart efforts by the Azerbaijani independence movement to overthrow the Soviet Azerbaijani government.

He’s on thin ice at work with a boss who barely tolerates him and he is saddled with an inexperienced partner named Wattie.

Set at the beginning of 1973, this is the first Harry McCoy novel and what an excellent start to a series it is! While he works hard to put away the guilty, he has a soft spot for those who are down on their luck. He does eventually clarify some of these references and and I was quite intrigued by Harry’s backstory, including his childhood allegiances to the Glaswegian underworld.

The majority of pages are undamaged with some creasing or tearing, and pencil underlining of text, but this is minimal. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for. The book is peppered with cultural and political references familiar to those of us born nearer that era- ahem- as well painting a grimly real backdrop for readers less familiar with the period.She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom.