David Mark novels are never for the squeamish, and this one begins as it means to go on, with a visit to hell, in the form of a flashback. We are in one of the notorious Romanian orphanages which came to light when the country opened up – after a fashion – following the fall of the Ceaucescu regime in 1989. An as-yet-unnamed foreign visitor is being shown what is known as The Dying Room, where dozens of terminally ill children are lying untended in their own filth, some in cages, others in cots.
We soon learn that the visitor was Rab Hawksmoor, the owner of a Hull haulage firm, and someone who went on to become a controversial celebrity for his attempts to smuggle some of these children out of the country, and his frequent brushes with the Romanian authorities and crime gangs.
Present day, and we rejoin the unique repertory company that has featured in thirteen previous Aector McAvoy novels. Central is Aector himself, a towering bear of a man, originally from the Scottish Highlands. He is capable of terrifying violence when provoked but is, by nature, meek, socially unsure, a devoted husband to Roisin, and a proud father of two children, Lilah and Finn. He is now a Detective Inspector, in charge of a Cold Case Unit. His closest professional colleague is Detective Superintendent Trish Pharaoh. Not only does she never ‘play by the book’, there is not a police manual from which she has not ripped the pages and then thrown on a bonfire in contempt.
Rab Hawkswood is now a shadow of his former self:
“Shrunken now. Diminished. Grey hair and straggly beard, scrawny chicken skin and a lank ponytail hanging whitely from his otherwise bald head.”
Aside from his own exploits, Hawkswood has known personal tragedy. A decade earlier, his son Davey – a bare-knuckle fighter – was found beaten to death near a local cemetery. His murder was never solved, but the case has now been resurrected, and McAvoy has the dubious privilege of leading the investigation, despite the protests of Davey’s mother.
Leaving aside the fact that Hawksmoor’s Romanian crusade seems to have unleashed the closest human thing to a monster from hell, to add to McAvoy’s problems, Trish Pharaoh appears to be playing, not for the first time, a destructive and secret game of her own devising that is leaving a trail of bloodied bodies in its wake. That, and the fact that Roisin’s father, the dangerously ‘Papa’ Teague and his Traveler kin now appear to have skin in the game. The conclusion is predictably violent and, not for the first time, David Mark takes us on a journey through the darker landscape of human excesses and venality, and with the walking paradox that is McAvoy at his most vulnerable – and dangerous.
After the Weeping will be published by Severn House on 2nd December. Click the author image (left) to read my reviews of earlier Aector McAvoy books.
The book begins with a flashback to an attempt by young men to carry out what seems to be a robbery in an isolated rural property. It ends in horrific violence, matched only by the destructive storm that rages over the heads of the ill-advised and ill-prepared group. Cut to the present day, and another storm has lashed Humberside, bringing down power lines, flooding homes, and uprooting trees. One such tree, an ancient ash, reveals something truly awful – a human body, mostly decayed, entwined within its roots in a macabre embrace.
David Mark (right) writes with a sometimes frightening intensity as dark events swirl around Aector McAvoy. The big man, gentle and hesitant though he may seem, is, however, like a rock. He is one of the most original creations in a very crowded field of fictional British coppers, and his capacity to bear pain for others – particularly in this episode his son Fin and Trish Pharoah – is movingly described. Mark’s work may – at first glance – seem miles away from the Factory novels of that Noir genius Derek Raymond, but McAvoy shares the same compassion, the same sworn vow to find justice for the slain, and the same awareness of suffering shown by the nameless sergeant in masterpieces like I Was Dora Suarez.
We are left to imagine what he looks like. He never uses violence as a matter of habit, but his inner rage fuels a temper which can destroy those who are unwise enough to provoke him. Why is he so bitter, so angry, so disgusted? Of himself, he says:
The story begins with a murder, graphically described and, at this point in the review, it is probably pertinent to warn squeamish readers to return to the world of painless and tidy murders in Cotswold manor houses and drawing rooms, because death in this book is ugly, ragged, slow and visceral. The victim is a middle-aged woman who makes a living out of reading Tarot cards, tea leaves, crystal balls and other trinkets of the clairvoyance trade. She lives in an isolated cottage on the bleak shore of the Humber and, one evening, with a cold wind scouring in off the river, she tells one fortune too many.
“She has found herself some mornings with little horseshoe grooves dug into the soft flesh of her palms. Sometimes her wrists and elbows ache until lunchtime. She sleeps like a toppled pugilist: a Pompeian tragedy. She sees such terrible things in the few snatched moments of unconsciousness.”
Adam Nunn is a decent enough fellow, but like all of us, he has made his mistakes. He lives with Zara, a struggling restaurant owner, but has a child of his own, Tilly, who lives with Grace, her mother. Adam has discovered that he is adopted, and has employed a fairly seedy private investigator to try to trace his birth parents.
Along the way, Mark (right) introduces us to some loathsome individuals who have all played their part in Adam Nunn’s terrible back story. There’s local politician Leo Riley, for example:
very so often a book comes along that is so beautifully written and so haunting that a reviewer has to dig deep to even begin to do it justice. Shamus Dust by Janet Roger is one such. The author seems, as they say, to have come from nowhere. No previous books. No hobnobbing on social media. So who is Janet Roger? On her website she says:
o, what exactly is Shamus Dust? Tribute? Homage? Pastiche? ‘Nod in the direction of..’? ‘Strongly influenced by ..’? Pick your own description, but I know that if I were listening to this as an audio book, narrated in a smoky, world-weary American accent, I could be listening to the master himself. The phrase ‘Often imitated, never bettered’ is an advertising cliché and, of course, Janet Roger doesn’t better Chandler, but she runs him pretty damn close with a taut and poetic style that never fails to shimmer on the page.
ig mistake. Councillor Drake underestimates Newman’s intelligence and natural scepticism. Our man uncovers a homosexual vice ring, a cabal of opportunists who stand to make millions by rebuilding a shattered city, and an archaeological discovery which could halt their reconstruction bonanza.
n a fictional world overflowing with disfunctional detectives who happen to be rather good at their jobs, Joseph Knox has raised, or perhaps lowered, the bar considerably with his DC Aidan Waits. We first met Waits in 
Together with his grotesque partner and immediate boss, DI Peter Sutcliffe, Waits always gets the shitty end of the stick. ‘Sutty’ Sutcliffe is, you might say, a good old fashioned copper. Waits goes to meet him in a dingy rock-and-roll boozer:
hy is Aidan Waits such a tortured character? Well, how long have you got? His childhood was loveless and chaotic, and spent largely in institutions where he rubbed shoulders with trainee failures, malcontents and killers. Echoing Nietzsche’s chilling remarks about the moral abyss, Waits has, more recently, gazed too long into a chasm inhabited by a repellent Manchester crime lord called Zane Carver. Carver has fed Waits’s drug habit, and the two have fought over women. Carver has a particular talent with women:
s distinctive as Knox is as a stylist, and as much as he is a master of the inky black metaphor, he has a tale to tell and a plot to spin. The sepulchral calm of Martin Wick’s closely guarded hospital room is shattered by a savage attack which Waits survives, but puts him at the head of the queue as the police and the gutter press search for scapegoats. With Carver having decided to exact revenge on Waits by donning his black cap and pronounced the death sentence, Waits is on the run both from the gangster and, no less implacably, his politically motivated senior officers, but he keeps them at bay. He discovers faint-but-fatal fault lines in the original case against Martin Wicks, and finds that both Kevin Blake, the detective who brought Wicks to justice, and Frank Moore, the father of the murdered children, still have songs to sing.
Joseph Knox writes like an angel. Possibly an Angel of Death, but he grasps the spluttering torch of English Noir once carried by such writers as Derek Raymond, and runs with such vigour that the flame burns brightly once again. He is not without humour, and there are many – if unrepeatable – gags exchanged between the cynical cops and their low-life prey. The politically correct nature of modern policing doesn’t escape his attention, either:
nox has his grim fun with a Manchester police force that is barely honest, city down-and-outs who have lost most of the trappings of humanity, and an infestation of tattooed, Spice-addicted thugs straight from Central Casting – with Hieronymus Bosch as the agency’s head of HR. He also leaves us with a delightfully enigmatic final few pages. The Sleepwalker is published by Doubleday and will be 
I’ve been waiting for this one! Just published by No Exit Press is a new study of the doomed genius, Ted Lewis. Written by Nick Triplow, it carries the blurb:
choices. Lewis suffered a downward spiral involving alcoholism and family breakdown. He died in 1982, just forty two years old. Triplow (right) has emulated his subject in one regard, however, as he now lives in Barton on Humber, where Lewis went to school. Ted Lewis’s first mentor was an English teacher called Henry Treece, about whom you can read a little more in 
fullybooked2017 