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After a heroic and infamous stint in the Surveillance Unit of the London Police, Detective Max Wolfe is on his first day working homicide when he is called into investigate the brutal throat slashing of prominent investment banker, Hugo Buck. On the face of it, Mr. Buck is, as far as murder victims go, a likely candidate, considering that he was not only a prominent member of an increasingly despised profession but also a serial philanderer who abused his hapless widow on a regular basis. But when Max finds "PIG" smeared in blood at the murder scene, it is apparent that there is more to this case is than meets the eye.
Before long, social media and the London tabloids are celebrating someone on the internet calling himself "Bob the Butcher," who is claiming he committed the murder out of "Occupy"-style motives, a claim that is giving him cult hero status among many in London. When a second person, Adam Jones, is found murdered in a similar fashion, Wolfe finds it hard to make a connection as this victim is a quasi-homeless drug addict who seems to be about as far from Hugo Buck on the social spectrum as possible. But when he interviews the drug addict's family, he finds that Jones was once a musical prodigy who went to the same elite boarding school as Hugo Buck, he starts to connect the dots.
As Max starts to piece together the investigation, he is also tasked with protecting the rest of the group of friends that seems to be the target of the killer. Since one of the classmates is Ben King, a MP whose star is on the rise, this adds an element of political intrigue and pressure to the investigation. Soon, Bob the Butcher's taunts and videos start to severely hamper the investigation and when Max finds himself hot on the pursuit of the criminal, one of Bob's videos features Max pleading for his life at the end of a gun barrel, a video that goes viral and threatens Wolfe's continued presence on the investigating team.
THE MURDER MAN is the first foray into crime fiction by Tony Parsons, an award-winning journalist and novelist. It weaves together a compelling crime novel replete with twists and turns that are both substantive and genuinely surprising and it does have a good deal to say about tabloid sensationalism and current radical rhetoric, but THE MURDER MAN at its heart is a book about family. The book is strongest when detailing Wolfe's life at home as a single father to his five-year old daughter Scout and their adopted dog Stan. Max, who tells his own story, is a flawed, but deeply caring father and nearly every scene written with Scout and Stan is deeply affecting and authentic. The twists in this book are not limited to Wolfe's professional work, as more than one genuine shock in the book has to do with Scout's departed mother. Similarly, the strong ties of family devotion among some of the secondary characters create some of the more potent scenes and as a result this novel is one of the more emotionally genuine crime fiction efforts in quite some time.
That is not to say, however, that THE MURDER MAN falters when it comes to the case at hand. This novel expertly blends the British Gentleman Detective subgenre (one can see shades of Elizabeth George here) and the grittier Scandinavian crime novels. Since Wolfe is himself on his first day with the Homicide and Serious Crime Command, the reader is introduced to crime investigation procedure, jargon, and etiquette at the same time as our protagonist and this makes for a more accessible (not to mention educational) read as a result.
THE MURDER MAN is planned to be the first of a trilogy of novels featuring Max and his world, scheduled to appear in the next two years. It is a brilliant crime novel, a thrilling mystery, and most of all, a supremely affecting emotional journey that is sure to please fans of crime fiction as well as anyone who is drawn to strongly written and touching emotional stories.
THE MURDER MAN was originally published in the UK as THE MURDER BAG.
§ Ben Neal is a librarian who likes to fancy himself an amateur writer, humorist, detective, and coffee connoisseur in his spare time. He can be reached at beneneal@indiana.edu.
Reviewed by Ben Neal, December 2014
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