If you’re someone who demands absolute reality in the way the police operate, then The Murder Bag probably won’t bear too close a scrutiny. And there’s a vaguely distracted air to the whole narrative that might not be to every reader’s taste. The story opens with not one, but two prologues. The first is set twenty years in the past and describes the appalling and degrading gang rape and murder of a young woman. As a reader, you thirst for revenge on her behalf. The book kicks off in gruesome style with what appears to be the gang rape and murder of a teenage girl. It then cuts to the present day where police are shadowing a suspected suicide bomber. And it’s here that we realize that the central character, Max Wolfe, has maverick tattooed on his forehead. The central character, DC Max Wolfe. Wolfe by name, lone wolf by nature – without giving away the thrilling end of a chapter which is almost a short story in its own right, it’s fair to say that Max instincts to go it alone will make him an unpredictable maverick. The book is short on convincing characterization – Max lacks any real depth and the journalist Scarlet Bush is little more than a caricature. Max Wolfe is a hugely likeable companion throughout this book and Parsons gives him some terrific scenes. Then the story proper begins: Max is moved from counter-terrorism surveillance to Homicide and the killing begins. Lots of killing, Lots of blood, be warned the gore quotient goes off the scale before the end of chapter three. This is a good old fashioned, machine-gun paced thriller from the get-go, albeit one with the trademark Parsons Wit and edginess. Some things he can’t leave behind. It’s solid but unremarkable, and the ending certainly isn’t anything out of the ordinary – although the final page twist had me sitting up in bed a couple of hours and with a disappointment in the end ” he could have spotted that way back in the previous parts”!
Happy Reading!
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