THE DARK WINTER

Hull in the bleak midwinter, three bodies lie in the morgue victims of brutal but, seemingly, unconnected crimes. The one link between all three victims is that earlier in their lives they each cheated death. To Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy it looks like someone is trying to even up the score and it’s up to him to find out who before they have chance to kill again.

The Dark Winter is the first outing for David Mark and McAvoy; they both make an assured start and promise good things to come.

David Mark has a good feel for the decidedly downbeat atmosphere of Hull, a town that has been on its uppers for years and yet somehow keeps stumbling on. The same could be said for his characters, they may have cheated the grim reaper but that hasn’t prevented life from dealing the some pretty poor cards.

In Aector McAvoy he has created a central character with the right mixture of sensitive introspection and two fisted toughness to appeal to readers who like to have a troubled cop to go with their weekly ration of murder any mayhem. It may be a little early to say so, but on the strength of this first outing David Mark and Aector McAvoy could soon attract favourable comparisons with, respectively, Ian Rankin and John Rebus.

This is certainly one of the most accomplished debut novels I have read recently, it takes its readers into some truly dark places and its author has an admirable sensitivity for landscape and character. On this showing David Mark has the potential to be one of the stars of British crime writing.