Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll. Ian Dury’s debut single with The Blockheads quickly became an anthem after its release in 1977, and was taken up as a rallying cry by up and coming musicians the world over, eager to experience said lifestyle. It’s a song I kept coming back to as I read the first novel in Chris McDonlad’s new series about Manchester-based private detective Ethan Adler.
Adler’s first case, here in The Wrong Man, is a doozy. Dylan Vy is the singer with The Crimson Riot, the latest band to break out of Manchester’s fertile music scene. Or, he was. Vy has been found dead in a local squat, track marks up and down his arms, and the police have quickly written his death off as another tragic music industry story. However, his father, Roger West, isn’t satisfied with their work and wants Adler to investigate.
Adler is in his 40s and coming off a career change. A lottery win has given this ex-prison officer a chance to pursue his childhood dream of becoming a private investigator. This new opportunity provides him with a distraction from the death of his wife Maggie, who broke her neck falling down the stairs. Adler was briefly a suspect in her death, not wanting to share his windfall it was alleged, before being cleared. As it happens, there’s more to Maggie’s story than first meets the eye and the mystery of her death runs as a second story line throughout The Wrong Man, which ends in a cliff-hanger.
Amelia Hope is Adler’s new assistant. She’s in her early 20s, quirky and alternative, with a quick wit and computer smarts to complement the strait-laced and, it must be acknowledged, slightly bland Adler. Hope has her own struggles, living with an alcoholic and abusive mother, and there is a sense that she needs a distraction just as much as Adler. The evolving relationship between the pair moves on from the initial misgivings each has about the other into professional respect and then friendship, and is one of the novel’s delights.
The author has made an excellent choice for his victim. Musicians have famously chaotic lives that provide plenty of avenues for exploration. West admits his son was no saint, he enjoyed all of the benefits of his position with multiple sexual partners despite a very public relationship with the social media influencer Gianna Frost. Vy lived a hard-partying lifestyle that included booze and drugs, though his father is adamant he was not a heroin user. The squat his corpse was discovered in belonged to a known dealer.
Even though we never meet Vy in the book, McDonald makes us care about him. A dead rock star could easily be a caricature, but the author is careful to present him as a complicated person, full of contradictions. He is described as brash and rude, but the story reveals a gentle side, and the leaking online of unreleased song demos suggests a talented artist already regretting his pursuit of juvenile pleasures and searching for something more meaningful.
As a rising star in the music business, Vy stood to become very rich. Money and success open the door to greed and jealousy whether it be from obsessive fans, envious band members who feel the limelight is rightly theirs, or corrupt record company employees and band management. McDonald navigates the murky waters of fame and the music business very well, with an authoritative knowledge that makes Adler and Hope’s investigation feel authentic. The personal threats they receive from the Manchester underworld add drama and peril to the story. Likewise, McDonald brings Manchester to life and captures something of the city’s unique identity.
Overall, The Wrong Man is a very satisfying mystery that benefits from great pacing, local flavour and an interesting case whose answer remains obscure until the end, and a pair of likeable, engaging protagonists. Maybe Adler’s character would benefit from a few more rough edges, but other than that I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to book two.
For more regional British crime, take a look at Better Off Dead by Sean Watkin from earlier this year.
Harper North
Print/Kindle
£6.99
CFL Rating: 4 Stars
