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The Murder Bag
The Murder Bag
The Murder Bag
Audiobook9 hours

The Murder Bag

Written by Tony Parsons

Narrated by Colin Mace

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

Twenty years ago seven students became friends at their exclusive private school, Potter's Field. Now they have started dying in the most violent way imaginable. Detective Max Wolfe follows the bloody trail from the backstreets and bright lights of the city, to the darkest corners of the corridors of power. As the bodies pile up, Max finds he is fighting not only for justice, but for his own life...
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 8, 2014
ISBN9781471262838
The Murder Bag
Author

Tony Parsons

Tony Parsons is the author of Man and Boy , winner of the Book of the Year prize. His subsequent novels – One For My Baby, Man and Wife, The Family Way, Stories We Could Tell and My Favourite Wife – were all bestsellers. He is also the author of the Max Wolfe thrillers. He lives in London.

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Reviews for The Murder Bag

Rating: 3.659090909090909 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

88 ratings13 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It takes time, but you eventually really care for Max, the main character. He's closed off and harsh, but he is also soft and got hurt so badly, that you understand why. The secondary characters are great and add to the story so much. It's a dark and also good book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I received this book in a draw from the Dead Good Crime Book Group and am so glad I did. The prologue sets the stage for the story. A young girl is gang raped, then killed. Flash forward 20 years and a group of men that went to school together are getting killed. It is easy to see the connection to the rape and murder, but the story that follows is who is killing them and will the original crime ever be discovered. The main character is DC Max Wolf. He is a single father raising his 6 year old daughter Scout and their dog Stan. He is new on the homicide team, but quickly becomes an integral part of the team. He tends to be a maverick and his Chief does not think too highly of him. As the story unravels, they discover corruption at the school and eventually discover who is killing the men. The ending is somewhat of a shocker. I am looking forward to more Max Wolf books.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Pretty good airplane read -good story, interesting protagonist, but wow - this author has issues with women! The female characters are either manipulative and slutty, manly and sexless, cold and castrating, heartless and selfish (his ex wife), or merely sweet old ladies. Seems to me Mr. Parsons needs a touch of therapy!!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Very dark and disturbing for a detective murder mystery. Certainly not sanitized. But the writing is good and the detective's daughter gives him humanity. Fast paced, not really a plot twister, but reasonable development and plenty of murders. I will probably read the next one.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Ich kann nicht sagen, woran es liegt, aber ich konnte einfach nicht damit aufhören, dieses Hörbuch zu hören. Den brutalen Einstieg muss man erst mal überstehen und auch die zweite Szene mit Wolfes eigenmächtigem Einsatz bei einem Einsatz gegen einen Terrorverdächtigen war nicht ganz mein Fall. Dann aber zog mich das Buch wirklich in Bann, trotz einiger Ungereimtheiten und logischer Brüche, sowohl was den Fall selbst als auch die Ermittlungen betraf. Wahrscheinlich war es v.a. der Sprecher, der es schaffte, dem Ich-Erzähler Tom Wolfe Leben einzuhauchen und dem ich sehr gerne zuhörte. Vordergründig kann man sich vorstellen, dass es um eine Art Rachegeschichte gehen muss. Wie aber alles zusammenhängt, ist dennoch unklar und bis zum Ende spannend.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    There is no doubt that Tony Parsons writes good fiction; but after this, his debut as a crime writer, I think that there is a big doubt as to whether he is a good crime writer. This book has been successful in the best-selling charts; a combination of his reputation and the enormous push from his publishers, but to my mind it is only moderate. My complaints are that the plot has been done too often, revenge on a Bullingdon type clique; and that the principal character is simply unbelievable. He is a DC who persistently breaks the rules, and Queen's Police Medal or not, he would never have survived the disciplinary machine to solve all the cases. The "bonus" short story attached simply reinforced my disappointment! But, his skill as a writer made it a quick read (and I wanted the turn the pages) and the all the bits about "a single parent and his young daughter" were reminiscent of his early books which I enjoyed enormously.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the first DC Max Wolfe story.A single Dad to Scout and their dog StanHe is newly assigned to the Mets murder squad.A killer is killing old school friends.Max investigates he visits the old boarding school looking for clues. Someone confesses but is he the real killer. Max eventually unmasks the real killer. I will look out for the second book in the series.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It is apparent, particularly in the earlier parts of the book, that Tony Parsons has done his homework. He’s clearly visited the Black Museum and I would guess he’s been able to interview one or more working policemen. The problem with this is that page after page is crammed with details that were no doubt fascinating to the author but they seldom add anything to the plot. There was so much of this that I thought I’d never get to the real story. Another irritant has been mentioned by other reviewers – the main character, Max Wolfe, has to mention that he drives, parks and drools over his BMW X5 every other paragraph.I’ve never read any of Parsons’ other novels though I am aware of them. I can see why he has been successful in writing family dramas because the best feature of The Murder Bag is Wolfe’s description of his relationship with his daughter and ex-wife. Parsons is also clearly a lover of dogs and even though I am a cat person I found myself genuinely moved by the way he is able describe dog behaviour and loyalty. The downside of these aspects of the novel is that it can veer into sentimentality.As far as the crime/mystery element is concerned then there’s nothing out of the ordinary here. If you are a fan of the genre then you will be ahead of Max Wolfe at every turn in working out what happens next, where the missing body is and who the killer is. I liked Wolfe as a character because he seems to be a decent human being despite the usual clichéd defects. The wish fulfilment apparent in the woman he has an affair with is not believable and neither are a lot of the consumer trappings of his lifestyle which would not be affordable on a detective’s salary.It sounds like I really don’t rate the book but I did find it generally likable and well written. I will certainly give the next book in the series a go to see if some of the clunkier parts of this first in the series are ironed out. I’m very intolerant of poorly written books and will abandon them very early on. This one kept me reading until the end despite its faults.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book had too much graphic violence and too many psychopaths for my taste. The only mystery is who did it, not why, as we know this right away from the prologue. Nonetheless, I liked the detective Max Wolfe and his family, 5-year-old daughter Scout and small red Cavalier spaniel Stan, and that was enough to keep me reading. I plan to read the next book in the series, and maybe check out some of his earlier domestic fiction, which presumably won't be full of psychopaths and graphic violence. Parsons is a great storyteller.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This is a very average write by numbers police procedural with the added mawkish irritation of his previous books. I think it's meant to be the start of a trilogy. I doubt I'll read the others.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The publisher's blurb says this is the first in a new crime series. In fact Fantastic Fiction tells me the title for the second in the Max Wolfe series to be published in 2015 is THE SLAUGHTER MAN.Detective Max Wolfe has recently arrived in the Homicide division of London's West End Central, 27 Savile Row, and he is a bit of a loose cannon. As far as Max is concerned his colleagues and superior officers are too easily distracted from the scent, too easily deterred from following a lead.Max is a single father of a little girl, and somehow Scout makes him understand that he has to do his job thoroughly to protect people just like his daughter.For most of the novel the reader knows what connects the ex private school students who are being killed one by one, but not who the person killing them is. Four are dead and someone is imprisoned for their murder but Max is convinced it is not over yet. And of course Max is right.In some ways the elements of this story are predictable but there is enough mystery to keep you going. The narration by Colin Mace is superb.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Tony Parsons was one of my heroes when I was a teenager in the 1970s. Along with Julie Burchill, whom he subsequently married, he was the high priest of rock journalism, delivering his weekly sermons through the columns of the New Musical Express, spreading word of the exciting new world of punk and new wave. He moved on from the rock pres towards mainstream journalism, and has had a weekly column in one national newspaper or another ever since. During that time he published various novels, though it was only with 'Man and Boy' that he achieved critical and commercial success.

    As it happens, I didn't like 'Man and Boy'. I found it mawkish and rather nauseating, and I was, as a consequence, reluctant to try another of his other books. I did, however, hear a number of people whose judgement I generally trust praising 'The Murder Bag' and, seeing it on sale quite cheaply, I decided to take a punt on it.

    That was a fortuitous choice. 'The Murder Bag' is a fantastic police procedural crime novel. The principal protagonist is Detective Constable Max Wolfe, formally on the Anti-Terrorist Squad (with whom he won the Queen's Police Medal). He is now part of a special murder investigation squad, based in the heart of London in Savile Row. On his first day in that role he is called to the scene of the particularly brutal murder of a merchant banker. The next day a homeless man is killed in exactly the same way. Further investigation shows firstly that the homeless man had come from a privileged background, and secondly that he had been at school with the first victim. The school in question is Potter's Field, a private boys school with exorbitant fees which numbers a selection of senior military and political figures among its alumni.

    Max Wolfe is a very well drawn character - flawed, though not to the clichéd extent that now seems obligatory among TV detectives, and immensely plausible. The plot is soundly constructed too - sufficiently complex to keep the reader guessing, but never to the point of requiring a suspension of disbelief. Parson's prose is well tuned, too, racing along with the economy of expression that one would expect from a professional journalist.

    Apparently DC Wolfe will be back in another book next year, and I am already looking forward to it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    As one would expect from Tony Parsons, this is a well written book. It is the first in a planned series of detective novels featuring DC Wolfe and will be so easy to translate into a television series that I expect the main companies are in negotiations as I write.First novels in a series can be light weight affairs with introductions to the main characters taking half the output: not this one. Parsons borrows a technique of which I first became aware in a James Bond film, that is the mini-adventure tacked onto the beginning: six pages of prologue gives us a pretty fair idea of our main character, DC Wolfe, before the story proper begins. Wolfe can then bloom into quite a well rounded individual within his first book, without it impinging on the plot flow.The story is of a series of killings somehow connected to an event which occurred many years previously at a public school. The problem is that, even when the prospective victims know that they are in line for a savage death, they understand the school code and do not "rat" on their chums. The tale unwinds at a good pace and a regular supply of gory corpses should further entice television moguls to drool.Unfortunately, I found the denouement a little disappointing. Parsons had expertly lead us down the role of suspecting everyone in turn and, I'll confess that I did not see the final explanation until it was provided, however, our author used one of the frowned upon means of hiding the killer's identity from the reader. I would like to explain in greater detail, but I cannot see how to so do without revealing the final twist and hence, spoiling the plot.Despite this niggle, the book was a pleasing read and I shall await 2015 eagerly (the promised date of Wolfe's return).