ALAN JONES - BLOQ (2016)

Synopsis/blurb….

A gritty crime thriller. Glasgow man Bill Ingram waits in the city's Central Station to meet his daughter, returning home from London for Christmas. When the last train pulls in, and she doesn't get off it, he makes a desperate overnight dash to find out why. His search for her takes over his life, costing him his job and, as he withdraws from home, family and friends, he finds himself alone, despairing of ever seeing her again.

Some long overdue thoughts on this one seeing as I read it back in April!

My third outing with Scottish author Alan Jones and a much darker journey this time.

Bill Ingram, a widower has to give up his life in Glasgow to investigate the disappearance of his only daughter Carol, after getting the bum’s rush from the police.

An interesting book, seeing Bill try and unpick the threads of the previous six months of his daughter’s life in an effort to find hint as to what may have happened to her. Catching up with some old work colleagues, gives Bill the first indications that his daughter’s life went alarmingly off the rails quickly.

The bright lights in the form of charismatic Albanian gangster and nightclub owner Aleksander Gjebrea have seduced Carol. Sex, drugs, drink and a party lifestyle until Aleksander tires of her. The charming façade hiding his vicious nature.

Bill with some unlikely assistance from inside Alek’s club, tries to bring the Albanian’s operation down and exact some retribution for Carol and any other victim’s Gjebrea has used up and discarded along the way.        

Bloody, violent, graphic, brutal – not too many light moments during this journey, though to be fair our author tries to bring a bit of joy back into Bill’s life in the form of Anna – the inside op in Alek’s nightclub. Anna herself having ample reasons for seeing our Albanian brought to heel. 

I'm a fan of darker books so all the above are compliments! 

Overall verdict - enjoyable for the most part – with a couple of quibbles. I couldn’t quite buy the romantic element of the tale given the disparity in ages between our two avengers – though without such an event the book would have been extremely bleak.

Alan Jones is a pen name. He wishes to retain anonymity for now.

A second minor criticism is the author’s tendency to perhaps over-explain every little detail. We are privy to Bill’s reasoning for every action to the nth degree which irritated after a while. A bit more trust in allowing the reader to join the dots up would have made for a more satisfying read in my opinion.

4 from 5

Alan Jones has his website here and you can catch him on Twitter - @alanjonesbooks

His two previous books were The Cabinetmaker (review here) and Blue Wicked (here).

Alan was kind enough to ping me a copy of this for review. 

Read April, 2016