Dark Winter

Warning: This review may contain spoilers.

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This book introduces the character of Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy, a member of the Serious and Organized Crimes Unit in the Hull police force. In the days leading up to Christmas, McAvoy witnesses a brutal killing in a church and becomes part of the squad investigating the case, only to discover other crimes that appear to be different but have a tenuous connection. McAvoy is a dogged DS and will stop at nothing to ensure that wrongs are righted and justice is done.

For a series debut, this is pretty good. The bleakness of winter in Hull and the Yorkshire moors is described well, and the characters are developed enough to make them seem real, without too much dumping of backstory. And it show more is a nice change to see a cop who is a family man as opposed to the tortured drunken depressive loner that so often pops up in police procedurals. But while I am glad he is a family man, I could have done without the steamy bits between him and his wife. I'm never really interested in those bits because that is private to the characters and I as a reader do not want to intrude on them. Fortunately, these moments are brief and few in number.

As for the case itself, it unrolled at a decent pace, albeit with some repetition as characters briefed each other on new information they had obtained. And I must have been rushing through the end of the book, because some aspects of the ending confused me: namely, why Sparky was arrested. Did he actually have anything to do with the crimes or was he more of an accessory?

Overall, I would probably continue with this series. show less

I really liked 'The Dark Winter', at least the first 90% or so of it. Well-written, an intricate plot, an interesting location, good character development, and the good guys win- literally, all the things I look for when experiencing a new author for the first time. David Mark is definitely a writer I want to see more from in the future.

The main characters, especially McAvoy (especially) and Pharoah were very well done. Good rapport between them, plus a smattering of sexual tension helped move the story forward whenever it felt like the investigation was slowing down. Without getting into the specifics of the plot, my favorite aspect of this book was McAvoy's making the logical leaps that often sound pretty straightforward on the page show more but in the real world are more difficult to make in real time.

My only problem with the story, and I have this same issue whenever it happens in a book or on the screen, is when a great procedural gets to a point where something 'magical' or just plain lucky happens that accelerates the arc of the story. Without spoiling the plot, there's a point toward the end where McAvoy literally stumbles into something that probably would have been resolved if the procedural had just continued. It may have reduced the number of pages required to reach a similar point, but seemed really unlikely to have actually occurred.

All-in-all, a really good read by a new author. show less

My knowledge of Hull, a formerly bustling fishing port on the Humber Estuary, is limited - I made a couple of very brief visits more than thirty years ago, principally for the purpose of driving over the graceful Humber Bridge. I would have to say that David Mark's grim novel is not exactly going to send me scurrying back - throughout the book, set in the run up to Christmas, one can almost feel the piercing cold that relentlessly grips the city.

The plot revolves around a series of particularly brutal murders that are investigated by Detective Sergeant Aector (a Gaelic forename) McEvoy, raised in the Scottish Highlands and come to rest in Hull. This is the first novel in what promises to be an intriguing series, and McEvoy already has a show more fair amount of baggage behind him. There are passing references to estrangement from his father, a crofter in the Western Isles, and also to incident the previous year in which McEvoy uncovered corruption among his CID colleagues which led to a the demise of senior officers and his own ostracisation.

He takes comfort in his blissful marriage to Roisin, formerly part of a travelling community, and their three year old son Finlay. McEvoy is out with Finlay as the novel opens, with the two of them waiting in a city centre cafe for Roisin, when all at once they hear some screaming from the nearby Hull Cathedral. McEvoy momentarily forgets his paternal duties and runs towards the incident, only to be knocked to the floor by a fleeing man who, it transpires, has just killed a choir girl. This is merely the first of a serious of increasingly brutal and beguiling murders

McEvoy is an engaging character - flawed, but not wrecked, and essentially empathetic in his treatment of his family, fellow officers, and even suspects. Unusual, but without the irritating quirkiness of far too many fictional detectives these days. I am looking forward to future volumes. show less

I’m always a little dubious when I’m told that ‘only’ one person can join the dots.

What, exactly, makes DS Aector McAvoy so special that he is the only police officer able to see a connection between three seemingly disparate murders? It seems to be his conscience and a determination, sadly not shared by all his fellow officers, to catch the actual killer, rather than the most likely suspect. I’m fairly sure this shouldn’t make him such an unusual police officer…but apparently it does David Marks’ vision of policing in Hull.

== What’s it about? ==

A man who nearly died 40 years ago dies in eerily similar circumstances to his original near-death incident. Could this be a meaningful suicide perpetrated by a guilty show more survivor? Meanwhile a young girl is brutally murdered inside a busy church and it quickly transpires that she survived a similar attack as a baby. Could this be a bizarre coincidence? Well, this is a crime novel, so I think you can guess the answer to those two questions. When another survivor dies in eerily similar circumstances to those he had previously escaped, it appears that McAvoy’s bosses may finally be ready to listen to him. Of course, McAvoy is a sole survivor himself, so perhaps he won’t need to hunt too hard for the killer…

== What’s it like? ==

Emotional. Reliant on coincidence and instinct. Violent. (One victim has her rapist’s initials carved into her genitalia.)

McAvoy just happens to be the man dispatched to inform the ex naval officer’s sister that his disappearance is now a death (his superiors like to keep him out of the way as punishment for ‘grassing’ on a senior officer last year); he also just happens to be first on the scene when the girl is attacked in the church and is struck by the killer as a result. This is how he is able to start making links between the two cases and his own experiences, and the story continues in much the same vein

If you don’t mind a few doses of coincidence then you’re likely to enjoy the intriguing premise. Who would want to kill sole survivors of terrible events? What possible motivation could they have? I actually really liked the final answer to this, though it is arguably as far-fetched as, well, everything else that happens in the story.

While McAvoy attempts to single-handedly manage the cases in the way he feels they should be handled, he brushes up against new boss, ‘Pharaoh’, in a unit rife with political tensions and ripe for backstabbing. Quite why there has to be sexual tension introduced between the characters I don’t know, especially since McAvoy practically worships his young wife and the proper storyline has to take a break at one point so they can have a baby related trauma. Is this frisson between the officers meant to emphasise the apparently corrupt / corrupting nature of the Hull police force or are we just to assume once again that a handsome man and powerful woman can’t work together without contemplating how much they might enjoy each other naked? Either way, it irritated me.

== Final thoughts ==

This is a deeply emotional story. McAvoy wrestles with his conscience, his colleagues and his inability to always be there for his precious family (he abandons his son at a cafe to sprint to the murder at the church without a second thought) and even the killer is racked with emotion mid and post-kill. (‘There were tears in his eyes’, McAvoy notes, with the ‘sudden sense’ that this is important.) The resolution is interesting, though the final chapter is unnecessary, and if you like your crime thrillers violent and mildly philosophical, then this one’s for you. show less

First Line: The old man looks up, and for a moment it feels as though he is staring through the wrong end of a telescope.

A young girl adopted from Sierra Leone is hacked to death in full view of the congregation at Holy Trinity Church in the center of Hull. Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy is assigned to the task force looking for the killer and fully expects to spend his time manning the phones and making sure everyone enters all their information in the database.

Before he gets fully settled in, the Assistant Chief Commissioner asks him to take care of a death notification. Although it puts him in hot water with his superior, McAvoy does so and learns about an old man who, forty years earlier, had been the sole survivor of a ship show more wreck. The old man had agreed to be interviewed for a documentary and was with the film crew aboard an Icelandic container ship when he cut filming short and went outside for some air. A few days later, his body was found floating in a life raft.

The more McAvoy learns about both deaths, the more convinced he is that the two are related... and then a third death occurs, and the race is on to catch a killer who has a very singular objective. Well, at least the race is on with Aector. Some of his fellow officers seem more interested in a quick arrest than in finding the real killer.

I slid into this story effortlessly. Aector isn't your normal police officer. He doesn't smoke. He seldom drinks. He loves his pregnant wife and young son to distraction, and they love him every bit as much. He's what his boss DCI Patricia Pharaoh calls "a natural policeman"-- somehow it's in McAvoy's blood to feel the links between disparate facts, to insist upon seeing the right person in prison for committing a crime-- but he's a bit of a mystery and a joke amongst his co-workers.

There are whispers and rumors galore throughout the police station about McAvoy: that he turned in one of their own, that he's not to be trusted, that the only thing he's good for is answering phones and sitting at a computer. Then there's the matter of his size. He's a red-headed 6 foot five inch bear of a man who avoids using any semblance of force. There wouldn't be so many questions and rumors about McAvoy if the people he worked with knew more about the man, but they don't, so suspicion persists.

It was a sheer delight to begin to put the bits and pieces of information about McAvoy together as the story progressed. He is a fascinating, complex character. The identity of the killer was genuinely puzzling throughout, and some of the action sequences in the book actually made me gasp aloud as I read them. (I'm not a screamer, and I don't gasp, so you can use this as an indication of how far into the story I was!)

Above the characters and the killings, the atmosphere of Hull lies over everything like a grimy blanket of snow. Hull, a once thriving city until the fishing industry collapsed and sounded a death knell. Hull, full of history, full of hope-- and hopefully full of many future cases for DS Aector McAvoy to investigate. David Mark's debut novel has me hooked, and I want more! show less

What a refreshing change it is to have a detective in this genre who isn't the stereotypical flawed maverick with an idiosyncratic style and a drinking problem. I found McAvoy a likeable but rounded character, and the premise of a murderer wiping out lucky survivors of tragedies was fascinating. Mark avoided falling into the "grittiness" trap, which must have been tempting when dealing with towns like Hull and Grimsby, yet still presented a realistic picture of these locales. I found the book very well written, and the plot was engaging, interesting and believable for the most part.

Hull, East Yorkshire. Two weeks before Christmas, an elderly man - the only survivor of a fishing trawler tragedy 40 years before - is found murdered at sea. In a church, a young girl - the last surviving member of a family slaughtered during the conflict in Sierra Leone - is hacked to death with a machete. A junkie, who fled the burning house where he had set his family alight, is found incinerated on a rundown council estate. Someone is killing sole survivors in the manner they had escaped death. And it falls to Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy of Humberside CID to find out whom. McAvoy, despite being a six-foot-five, man mountain of a police officer, is not your typical bullish detective. A shy, gentle giant, he is a family man show more obsessed with being a good and decent cop; more dab hand with a database than gung-ho with a gun - traits that have seen him become increasingly isolated from his colleagues in the force. Desperate to prove his worth, McAvoy knows he must establish the motive behind the killings if he is to have any chance of pinning the perpetrator. And he must do so quickly, as this twisted yet ingenious killer appears to have an appetite for murder.

Hmm just what I needed … another “first book in a series featuring a charismatic detective…”

I really didn’t want to get ‘involved’ with another detective series just now but so glad I did. The author has written an excellent debut novel. Set in a bleak, wintery Hull, the novel introduces DS Aector McAvoy, gentle giant and loving husband and father just trying to get on with his job. He is investigating a series of killings in which the victims are all sole survivors of past tragedies, including the sinking of a trawler, a massacre in Sierra Leone and a domestic fire.
Tight plotting, strong characters and beautiful writing ensured that it was a thoroughly enjoyable read. Looking forward to the next one…

See what happens …hooked in again….. show less