Canongate buys two more of Parks' Harry McCoy

Canongate will publish the next two books in Alan Parks’ Glasgow-set Harry McCoy crime series, likened by the publisher to a "Celtic Sopranos".

Francis Bickmore, publishing director at Canongate, acquired world English rights, including audio, to books three and four of the Harry McCoy Thriller series from Tom Witcomb at Blake Friedmann.

The series began last year with Bloody January which was shortlisted for international crime prize the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, followed by February’s Son this month (both published by Canongate). Billy March Will Live Forever will be published in hardback in March 2020 with the fourth title to follow in April 2021.

Billy March Will Live Forever is set in August 1973, six months after the events of February’s Son. A rock star has overdosed in a Glasgow hotel and the city is in hysterics over a missing 12-year-old, Alice Winters. Meanwhile, Murray’s niece has fallen in with a bad crowd and when she goes missing, he asks McCoy to find her.

“In the footsteps of Detective Harry McCoy, Billy March Will Live Forever paces the mean streets of 1970s Glasgow, against a background that sees the clash of organised crime and pop culture, vice and power, law and disorder,” Canongate said.

“This is Tartan Noir at its best, and the series has already received praise from Ian Rankin, Peter May, Louise Welsh and Sarah Pinborough, and drawn comparisons with William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw trilogy.”

Parks has worked in the music industry for more than 20 years. He lives and works in Glasgow.

Bickmore said: “Parks is becoming a major new voice in the world of Scottish crime fiction. The gripping sense of 1970s Glasgow gangland really makes the McCoy books stand out and Parks’s vision for the series has the potential to make this a kind of Celtic Sopranos.”

Witcomb said: “I’m very excited for readers returning to McCoy’s Glasgow – what I’ve seen of the third novel sets a new standard for what crime fiction can be.”