Cruel Mercy by David Mark

Published by Penguin Random House / Blue Rider Press on February 7, 2017

Irish priests have always been popular characters in fiction. Father Jimmy Whelan, a priest in Galway who was raised in the Bronx, figures prominently in the latest Aector McAvoy novel. Where there are priests there are sinners, and several of those appear in Cruel Mercy, perhaps including Father Whelan. An undeniable sinner is known as the Penitent, although he fancies himself to have been transformed from sinner to redeemer. Any reasonable deity would think otherwise.

Sergeant McAvoy travels to New York because Brishen Ayres, dubbed the Miracle Man by the press, survived being shot in the head, although he is in a coma. Ayres, a boxing coach, brought a young man to America from Ireland to explore the lad’s prospects for a professional boxing career. The boxer is killed in the assault that Ayres survives. Additional mayhem ensues during the incident that takes the boxer’s life.

McAvoy’s boss, Trish Pharaoh, sends McAvoy to investigate, in part because of McAvoy’s family connection to a Traveler who apparently followed the boxer (also a Traveler) to New York. The concern is that the Travelers are involved in a family feud and that Ayres was caught in the middle, although McAvoy isn’t so sure.

In addition to the Travelers, the priest, and the Penitent, a Mafia enforcer named Claudio, a few other Mafia members, and a group of Chechen criminals join the cast in Cruel Mercy. McAvoy, of course, is caught in the middle of all of them. Most creepy fictional villains are too contrived to be anything but ridiculous, but David Mark invents a couple of creepy villains in Cruel Mercy who seem chillingly real.

The plot weaves layers of complexity without becoming muddy. Cruel Mercy isn’t for readers with a short attention span (plenty of modern thriller writers cater to that audience), but for those readers who persevere, the surprising payoff is rewarding. There are no loose ends in this carefully woven story.

Given the novel’s religious characters, it isn’t surprising to learn that the nature of sin and absolution are among the novel’s themes. The novel asks whether confession and forgiveness of sins are seen as a “get out of Hell free” card by people who only repent until the time comes to sin again. Characters have different ideas about how and whether their actions will affect their afterlives, but the best model is McAvoy, who doesn’t know what to believe and isn’t particularly religious, preferring to live as honestly and helpfully as he can because it is the right thing to do, not because he expects to be rewarded for his efforts after death.

Cruel Mercy is just as enjoyable as other entries in the McAvoy series. McAvoy’s fundamental decency makes him sympathetic but he never becomes sanctimonious. It is such a pleasure to spend time with him that I’m surprised the McAvoy series doesn’t have more followers.

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Taking Pity by David Mark

Published by Blue Rider Press on July 7, 2015

As series fans know, DS Aector McAvoy has been through hell. McAvoy is living apart from his wife and daughter to assure their protection from the criminal gang known as the Headhunters, which is fighting a turf war in Hull. McAvoy should be on sick leave, perhaps for the rest of his life, but politicians with clout want him (with the able assistance of his boss, DSI Trish Pharaoh) to investigate the murders of four family members that occurred fifty years earlier. The alleged murderer -- Peter "Daft Pete" Coles -- is finally being released from the mental health institution to which he was committed and the Home Office wants to make sure the case was investigated properly and the right man accused. Or (more likely) they want McAvoy to say that too much time has gone by to secure a conviction so that the case can quietly disappear.

Daft Pete, found near the bodies cradling a shotgun and muttering something about how he didn't mean it, is the obvious suspect. Of course, the reader knows that makes him the least likely culprit.

Meanwhile, DCI Colin Ray takes a break from drinking his way through his own misery to help another series regular, DC Helen Tremberg, who is recovering from injuries sustained when McAvoy's house was bombed in an earlier novel. Like McAvoy and apparently everyone in Hull, Tremberg is having her own problems with the Headhunters. She can't reveal that problem to Ray but she would like to see him put the criminal organization out of business.

Taking Pity is highly dependent on events that occurred in earlier novels. It can be read as a stand-alone, but some of the characters' actions and interactions might be puzzling to readers who are unfamiliar with the first three books in the series. Taking Pity only partially resolves plot threads that have been building throughout the series, leaving room for additional character development in novels to come.

Characters are the strength of these novels but David Mark is no slouch at plotting. The story is complex, believable, and reasonably surprising. This one is darker than the first three and McAvoy is less the center of attention, but Mark's ability to juggle the different plot threads and to bring them to a satisfying conclusion is impressive. British crime novels are always a pleasant departure from American thrillers, largely because so many American authors spend more time describing guns than characters. This is turning into one of my favorite series.

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Original Skin by David Mark

Published by Blue Rider Press on May 16, 2013

Like the first novel featuring Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy, Original Skin tells a story that is more interesting than suspenseful. Its focus is on the political ramifications of crime and on the relationships that continue to develop among the series' characters. This isn't a novel of shootouts and chase scenes, although enough action and humor are mixed into the story to keep it from becoming dry.

Suzie is into anonymous hook-ups (formerly known as swinging) and uses a website to find them. Her best friend, a gay man named Simon Appleyard, does the same. After Simon dies, having apparently hung himself, repeated attempts are made on Suzie's life. McAvoy gets involved after he finds a cell phone in a stream, brings it home, dries it out, and discovers it belonged to Simon. The methodical McAvoy follows a rare hunch and comes to believe that Simon was murdered. His investigation leads him to a number of political figures who, like Suzie, have been playing sordid games. The story turns into a whodunit with all the plot twists, distractions, and red herrings that keep a reader guessing about the killer's identity. It's a bit convoluted but not outrageously so. The mystery isn't captivating -- its resolution has an anticlimactic feel -- but it held my attention.

That plotline develops alongside another as a relatively benign Vietnamese gang that has controlled Hull's cannabis supply is being muscled out by a more violent group of criminals. McAvoy's boss, Trish Pharaoh, is attacked by dogs and singed by a petrol bomb as she tries to get a handle on the situation. McAvoy, in the meantime, finds himself challenged to a bare-knuckle brawl in the name of honor. The plot thread involving the gangsters is largely used for character development, although it has some entertaining moments.

The characters are actually better than the story they inhabit. Aector is a good man who wants people to be good to each other. He doesn't care about arrest statistics or office politics. He's embarrassed, even angered, when his colleagues disparage people because of their ancestry. He's even more embarrassed when the topic turns to sex -- particularly the kinkier versions that he encounters during the course of the story. He's devoted to his wife and blushes with shame when he finds himself thinking, even momentarily, about another woman's body. His Old World prudishness is charming, but it's his essential decency that makes him such a likable character. Secondary characters are taking shape (particularly Aector's wife, who comes from a dubious background, and Pharaoh, who has a knack for making Aector uncomfortable); I expect they'll continue to be fleshed out in future installments.

Sensitive readers should know that the narrative describes scenes of torture. They aren't gratuitous or overly graphic, but some might find them disturbing. There are also some discussions of sex clubs and related diversions that didn't strike me as graphic at all, but the strong sexual content might offend some readers.

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The Dark Winter by David Mark

Published by Blue Rider Press on October 25, 2012

Some novels about serial killers challenge the reader to discover the pattern that links the murderers.  The Dark Winter is not one of those.  The pattern will become clear to the reader about a third of the way through the novel.  The police, who are a touch slow to see the obvious, figure it out by the novel’s midway point.  The more challenging puzzles are the killer’s identity and motivation.

Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy of the Humberside Police responds to a scream that turns out to be the last sound made by an adolescent girl named Daphne before she is hacked to death with a machete.  Born in Sierra Leone, Daphne was adopted after her parents became victims of genocide.  McAvoy would like to lead the investigation but he is instead assigned to tell Barbara Stein-Collinson that her brother Fred has been found dead in a lifeboat off the coast of Iceland.  Fred Stein had survived the sinking of a trawler at the same location more than thirty years earlier -- one of four that sank during the Black Winter -- and Fred had returned at the request of a documentarian to lay a wreath in the water to honor the dead.  Although Barbara believes that Fred committed suicide, we know from the novel’s prologue that Fred was knocked unconscious and thrown into the lifeboat.

Fans of crime novels will immediately suspect that the two killings are related.  The link will be clear to the savvy reader when a third killing occurs, and McAvoy eventually figures it out.  The real question is the killer’s identity.  The answer, of course, depends upon unlocking the killer’s motivation for following the pattern.  In that regard, the resolution of the mystery is at least plausible (by thriller standards, anyway) and modestly clever.  The novel’s conclusion, however, is a contrived attempt to add a final “thrill.”  It doesn’t detract from the story that precedes it but it doesn’t deliver the payoff that David Mark must have intended.

Mark writes fast moving prose.  Short sentences.  Omits pronouns.  When he isn’t doing that, he’s actually a decent wordsmith with some literary flair.  I’d like to see more of that in the next book.  It’s more appealing than strings of two word sentences.

Although this is Mark’s debut novel, McAvoy comes with the sort of baggage that most series protagonists accumulate over the course of a half dozen books.  His face and career are scarred by an incident that took place many months earlier.  Although he is mildly obsessive, a bit neurotic, and harbors an unhealthy passion for his job, he has the orderly mind of an accountant -- a trait that has condemned him to a desk job, managing databases.  He is therefore an unhappy cop, one who is burdened with the self-doubt that victimization can instill.

Half the story -- the better half -- focuses on McAvoy’s conflict with police officers who are more keen on making an arrest than on finding the guilty party.  McAvoy, who is also burdened with a conscience, wants the job done right, statistics be damned.  This makes him an interesting character, someone I’d welcome meeting again.

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