“Forgive” Not So Easy to Forget

Less than a week after publicizing the shortlist of contenders for the 2022 McIlvanney Prize, organizers of this year’s Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival—which began today in Stirling, Scotland, and will continue into Sunday—have identified the winner of that competition: May God Forgive, by Alan Parks (Canongate).

Released in the States this last spring, May God Forgive is the fifth installment in Parks’ series starring too-often self-abusive but nonetheless determined Glasgow police detective Harry McCoy. A Publishers Weekly review says the story “finds McCoy just out of hospital after a four-week stay to rest a perforated ulcer. Subsisting on a diet of Pepto-Bismol and alcohol, he fumbles around the edges of a fire-bombing case that killed five women and children in a hairdressing salon. Three young men are charged with the crime. Their subsequent kidnapping from the van driving them to prison raises the stakes. McCoy pulls at loose threads until connections to other murders—and to a longtime gangster friend of his—appear. Throughout the unrelenting violence and the pathos of abject mid-city poverty, Parks keeps the focus on McCoy. Deeply flawed and battered by life, he doggedly persists in the hope things will turn out well for him, though the reader realizes they likely won’t.” PW ends by stating that May God Forgive “ranks with the best of Ian Rankin and Stuart MacBride.”

Parks’ latest tale came out on top in this contest against four worthy challengers: The Heretic, by Liam McIlvanney (HarperCollins); A Corruption of Blood, by Ambrose Parry (Canongate); and The Second Cut, by Louise Welsh (Canongate).

The annual McIlvanney Prize, named in honor of writer William McIlvanney, who died in 2015, celebrates “the best Scottish crime book of the year.” Previous recipients include Hyde, by Craig Russell; Pine, by Francine Too; and A Treachery of Spies, by Manda Scott.

In addition to news of Parks’ victory, it was announced today that Tariq Ashkanani has won the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize for his Nebraska-set yarn, Welcome to Cooper (Thomas & Mercer), described as an “explosive thriller of bad choices and dark crimes.” Arusa Qureshi, chair of the Debut Prize judges, called the novel “well-structured, bleak and just the right amount of disturbing,” adding: “I found myself going back and re-reading once I’d finished to make sure I had every detail right, which I think is the mark of a really clever and riveting story.”

For more information about these awards, click here.