GUNNER – the multi-award nominated WW2 thriller by Alan Parks – has been included on the longlist for this year’s Best Fiction prize at Scotland’s National Book Awards, presented by the Saltire Society. One of the world’s oldest running prizes for literature, first awarded in 1937, Scotland’s National Book Awards celebrate the very best of Scottish writing across five categories – Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry, First Book and Research – the winners of each competing for the overall Book of the Year prize.
GUNNER, in which a war-wounded cop-turned-soldier returns to a mid-Blitz Glasgow, only to be immediately drawn into a strange and increasingly perilous murder investigation, is published in the UK by Baskerville, an imprint of John Murray, and in the US by Pegasus Books, as well as in translation in Spain, France, Italy and Holland. The book has since been recognised on the shortlist for the CWA Historical Dagger, as well as the longlists for the 2025 McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year and the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. The second book in the series, DECEPTION, is out now – and will be followed by book three, TRAITOR, in Summer 2027.
Longlisted for Best Fiction alongside Alan are Damian Barr, Chris Barkley, Natalie Jayne Clark, CJ Cooke, Maureen Cullen, Andrew Meeehan, Philip Parvis, Zoe Rankin and Gerda Stevenson. The shortlists will be announced in October, ahead of the awards ceremony in late November.
Congratulations Alan!
About GUNNER
‘Great storytelling… I loved it’ – Peter James
‘Great stuff… a vivid sense of place and time and what a main character!’ – Ian Rankin
‘In this superb historical espionage thriller, Parks excels at capturing the brutality of war… Gunner, meanwhile, is a clever, endearing hero whose personal and professional baggage have enough heft to sustain future instalments. This is a winner.’ – starred review, Publishers’ Weekly
March, 1941. Joseph Gunner is back on the streets of Glasgow after being wounded on the front lines in France.
Keeping the pain in his leg at bay with the help of morphine, Gunner, a former detective, is hoping to keep his head down as the Luftwaffe begin bombing Glasgow.
But when he runs into his old boss Drummond, he is persuaded to help examine a body found in the wreckage. When the body turns out to be that of a German, mutilated to disguise his identity, Gunner reluctantly agrees to investigate.
As Gunner begins to hunt for the truth he runs into old flames, bitter enemies, before finding himself embroiled in a high-level conspiracy that reaches far beyond his hometown of Glasgow.
Partly inspired by the true story of Rudolph Hess's secret mission to broker appeasement with Britain during WWII, GUNNER is an atmospheric and addictive new thriller from one of Britain's best-loved writers.
About Alan Parks
Alan Parks is the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of the Harry McCoy series, which has won the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year, the Prix Mystère de la Critique and an Edgar Award. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed Joseph Gunner thrillers, an international crime series set during the Second World War.
Alan worked in the music industry for over twenty years before turning to writing. He now lives and works in Glasgow.