I’ve never before read any Tony Parsons (other than journalistic pieces for the New Musical Express and the many other publications he has contributed to over the years). Best known for his “Man and Boy” trilogy of novels, in 2014 his writing took a very different approach when he began his first crime series featuring DC Max Wolfe.

To date there have been six novels (the latest “#Taken” published this year) and three shorter works. I was tempted to start at the beginning by a recent special offer on Amazon Kindle which focuses on first of series (I was obviously in a crime novel mood at the time  and also purchased Craig Russell’s “Lennox” and Don Winslow’s “The Power Of The Dog, neither of which I’ve read yet).

“The Murder Bag” certainly begins with a punch with a prologue set in 1988 which provides the historic framework for the events in what is clearly going to be a revenge novel. This prologue makes for uncomfortable reading and is continued with a high-octane first chapter which is how I imagine a Lee Child novel would read (I haven’t read one) and which also reminded me of the explosive show-piece openings of the BBC TV series “Line Of Duty”. The purpose of all this action is to give Max Wolfe a back story which explains his transfer to the Homicide and Serious Crime Division.

Wolfe is a newcomer in his post and a single parent with a 5 year old daughter Scout and a young King Charles Spaniel he is trying to settle into the family. There’s a lot of dog references in Wolfe’s first-person narrative, this is a man who notices dogs in his everyday life and investigations, they are a central part of his life, which gives him a little individual quirk compared to all the other fictional DCs out there.

When men of the same age meet a violent death with the same M.O a connection is made to their privileged past and after the sheer intensity of the first two sections this settles into a police procedural.

As a crime novel I’m not totally convinced that Parsons on this initial outing has got everything spot on. It feels a little inconsistent. You know with a Peter James what you will be getting and there’s few better at the police procedural novel which, when on his best form,  is so carefully executed that it is totally convincing. I know I’m comparing Parsons with one of the very best but I wasn’t always convinced here and felt that for a first-person narrative that the style wasn’t consistent, which made it unpredictable, true, but also a little jarring. I appreciate that it’s early days for DC Max Wolfe but I feel as a character he does not feel as assured as I would have expected. I know Parsons is trying to show different facets of personality with sentimental scenes involving his daughter and the dog, macho boxing scenes and within his professional life where as a newcomer he is bound to make mistakes but I don’t think all the pieces here come together. It seems as if the author is trying to play to his existing readers as well as those like myself, discovering him primarily as a crime writer and this is causing a slight struggle with style. But I think he will get there and I’m looking forward to reading more to confirm this.

The Murder Bag was published by Arrow in 2014. I read the Kindle edition.