The Murder Man

September 1, 2014
Parsons (Man and Boy) targets the snobbery of the British upper classes in his entertaining first foray into crime fiction. Maverick Det. Constable Max Wolfe becomes a hero after he disobeys orders and takes out a suicide bomber headed for a London railway station. Reassigned to homicide as a reward, Wolfe investigates the murders of investment banker Hugo Buck and homeless junkie Adam Jones, who turn out to have attended the same posh school, Potter’s Field, lorded over then as now by its headmaster, the haughty Peregrine Waugh. Parsons depicts the boarding school friends of the murder victims as upper-class clichés, but humorously so, sending up their lofty credentials. In this rarefied world, social class is often inversely proportional to morality. As the corpse count grows, Wolfe lets off steam by flirting with Buck’s seductive widow, drinking triple espressos, walking his dog, and doting on his five-year-old daughter, whom he’s raising as a single father. Readers will hope to see more of him. Agent: Sloan Harris, ICM.

October 1, 2014
Veteran novelist Parsons' first police thriller introduces Max Wolfe, a detective raising a young child alone, who's on a quest to find a vicious serial killer.In 1988, a gang rape and murder committed by a group of public school students-public school is the term for an expensive private school in the U.K.-has repercussions years later when a serial killer starts knocking off the now-grown men who committed the crime. First up is Hugo Buck, a rich banker who likes to beat his wife. Found with a gaping hole from a knife slash across his throat, Buck is only the first of a group of men involved in the crime to be brutally murdered. Wolfe, a detective constable transferred to the homicide squad following his unorthodox defusing of a bomb threat, finds himself trying to balance life with his 5-year-old daughter, Scout, and their puppy, Stan. With his thoughtful new boss, Victor Mallory, Max investigates Buck and the second victim, a homeless former drug addict named Adam. Both the killing wound and the word "PIG" found at the scenes link the crimes, and the information that both men were old friends and part of the same group of student military officers leads Max to become curious about the other students. Max, a pleasant, sympathetic character who takes his job seriously and is tentative about single fatherhood, finds the going slow and real life puzzling. The narrative works best during the first two-thirds of the book, becoming less believable as the novel progresses and Max is hot on the killer's trail. The resolution feels both hurried and tacked on to what is otherwise a very readable novel.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from October 1, 2014
Parsons grounds this impressive novel in a couple of detective-tale standbys, making them new. The first is the faded photograph, often, as here, a group shot, taken decades ago. Who are these achingly fresh-faced people? Why does everyone the cop meets have a copy, conspicuously framed? The second theme, usually connected, is the buried murder. Something very bad happened long ago. It's surfacing now. London police detective Max Wolfe, a brooder with a flair for language, investigates one murder, then a second. Both victims had their throats savaged by a commando knife, and, yes, both their young selves were in that photograph. The hunt leads Wolfe to an old-boy public school, and suddenly we're witnessing the casual cruelties of the British upper classes. Frantic efforts to keep the rest of the group alive produce charged confrontations, deductive dazzlement, and shuddery suspense, but the core is the well-borns' treatment of the plebes. And the plebes' hatrednot envy, hatredof the privileged. A somber, brooding tale for readers who like a bit of poetry with their murders.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)