Review: THE MURDER BAG, Tony Parsons

"There is something compelling about the novel"

BOOK BLURB

The gripping first novel in an explosive new crime series by Tony Parsons, bestselling author of Man and Boy. If you like crime-novels by Ian Rankin and Peter James, you will love this.

Twenty years ago seven rich, privileged students became friends at their exclusive private school, Potter’s Field. Now they have started dying in the most violent way imaginable.

Detective Max Wolfe has recently arrived in the Homicide division of London’s West End Central, 27 Savile Row.

Soon he is following the bloody trail from the backstreets and bright lights of the city, to the darkest corners of the internet and all the way to the corridors of power.

As the bodies pile up, Max finds the killer’s reach getting closer to everything - and everyone - he loves.

Soon he is fighting not only for justice, but for his own life...

WHAT I SAY

This is a decent plot. The flaw is that the book is very much presented as a police procedural genre, with a lot of detail given on the inner workings of the police – and as such there are times when the plot takes leaps which would normally be forgivable to push the story on, but which in a story that is presenting itself as ‘by the book’ it cannot get away with.

There is no denying, though, that a lot of research and hard work has been done, and there is something compelling about the novel. Max is probably at his best when showing his softer side, with his daughter and puppy, than when taking various beating so punishing that no one could actually endure them. But I have a feeling that the Max Wolfe series will get better and better. One to watch!

#tonyparsons #murderbagthe