‘Grunting and stumbling, they managed to get the plastic-wrapped corpse into the shallow depression, but the feet wouldn’t quite fit, protruding above the level of the surrounding packed earth.’
BLOQ is a novel published in April 2016 by Alan Jones. It tells the story of a father’s sense of complete hopelessness as he attempts to track down his missing daughter and the lengths he will go to, to discover the truth.
Please read on for my thoughts…
Book 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.
Bill Ingram is a man possessed.
After recently burying his wife, Bill awaits the arrival of his daughter Carol at the train station. This is to be their first Christmas without her and Bill was adamant that they would get through it together.
When Carol doesn’t appear at the station, Bill is very concerned. It’s Christmas Eve so he waits for the final train to arrive at the station in the hope that Carol missed her earlier seat. As the station slowly empties, Bill soon comes to the realisation that something is very very wrong.
Bill sets off on the long overnight drive to London with a head filled with what-if scenarios and a fear for his daughter’s safety.
On arrival at her apartment, Bill discovers that Carol has not been here for awhile. There is an air of desolation about the place and Bill finally comes to grips with the fact that Carol is missing.
Bill reacts as any parent would and immediately reports Carol missing to the police. Carol is an adult so the police are extremely slow to act, but Bill’s parental intuition has him convinced Carol is in trouble.
Bill makes the decision to search for Carol himself, and it as this search continues, that Bill finds himself caught up in a very frightening world indeed.
As Bill soon discovers, there is a very ugly and brutal side to humanity as he delves deep into the world of crime and prostitution. He faces foes he never imagined and gets himself heavily caught up in the underworld of Eastern European crime lords.
The descriptions of the violence inflicted on individuals, though quite gritty, were excellently portrayed. As a reader you are taken into a very seedy and very disturbing corrupt world. It’s quite frightening in it’s realism and would make you wonder about what is really going on behind closed doors. Alan Jones has portrayed the harrowing realities of prostitution for many naive young women and it is a terrible reflection of our society how young women can just disappear.
Alan Jones knowledge of IT and computers is also quite intricate and as I have a reasonable understanding of technology I wasn’t baffled by the lingo used.
Where the story lost some of it’s lustre for me was Bill’s story. Bill was a very ordinary man in the opening scenes but as his search for Carol continued I felt his behaviour was a little extreme and for me a little implausible. His actions become quite irrational as the story unfolded. Every parent’s worst nightmare is a missing child, no matter what their age, but how far would you go if it was your daughter?
Well you will just have to read BLOQ yourself to see would you be willing to push yourself as far as Bill……
Purchase Link : BLOQ
Meet Alan Jones:
Alan Jones is a Scottish Author with three gritty crime stories to his name, the first two set in Glasgow, the third one based in London. Living on the Clyde coast in Ayrshire, he works in the animal health industry, makes furniture and maintains and sails a 40 year old yacht in the Irish Sea and the West coast of Scotland. He writes under a pen name for work related reasons, and is married with grown up children. He loves reading, watching films and cooking. Last year he hung up his football boots as age and a dodgy ankle caught up with him.
His books are not for the faint-hearted, with some strong language, violence and various degrees of sexual content.
The first two books also contain a fair smattering of Glasgow slang.
You can find more about Alan Jones at http://www.alanjonesbooks.co.uk/
You will also find Alan Jones on Twitter
Great review! I’m not much for gritty descriptions but I like the sound of this book! It’s too bad the father was not as convincing as he could have been.
Thanks Donna. Mainly receiving 4* and 5* reviews but it just didn’t reach that level for me because of the father’s extreme behaviour!!