Sorrow Bound

Starred review from May 26, 2014
Det. Sgt. Aector McAvoy is suffering through mandated sessions with psychologist Sabine Keane while helping his boss, Det. Supt. Trish Pharaoh, track down a vicious killer, in Mark’s powerful third novel featuring the Yorkshire detective (after 2013’s Original Skin). With a second brutal murder, a pattern emerges that connects the victims to a serial rapist, Sebastien Hoyer-Wood, who was nearly killed by the husband of one of his victims. Meanwhile, Aector’s wife, Roisin, foils a robbery by midlevel drug boss Adam Downey, earning his wrath, and Det. Constable Helen Tremberg finds herself under threat of blackmail after a single debauched evening. Mark adroitly weaves all these threads together during a sweltering Hull summer full of lowering clouds but no rain, “a feverish heat; a pestilent, buzzing cloak.” The physically imposing Aector, a terrific lead, hews closely to the rules. Well-fleshed out supporting characters round out the cast. Readers should be prepared for graphic descriptions of gruesome crimes. Agent: Oli Munson, A.M. Heath (U.K.).

June 1, 2014
An introspective detective's involvement in a series of brutal crimes is both professional and personal. DS Aector McAvoy is a shy but physically impressive Scot with a Romany wife. Many of his colleagues are angry with him for bringing down a dishonest cop, and he's been required to attend six sessions with a police-approved counselor. The sessions are not going well, but Detective Superintendent Trish Pharaoh, McAvoy's boss at Serious and Organized Crime, still has complete faith in him. Half the unit is investigating the violent escalation in crime linked to a mysterious new group taking over the drug trade in and about Hull. McAvoy and Pharaoh, in the other half of the unit, are on the trail of a serial killer. They suspect the killings are revenge for what the killer considers a miscarriage of justice. Sebastien Hoyer-Wood, a well-connected young man, had committed a series of violent rapes he forced the victims' families to watch. But when he was caught, his college friend, now a psychiatrist, managed to get him committed to a posh mental home rather than jail. Now a number of people who saved Hoyer-Wood's life when he was severely beaten by a victim's husband become targets of the killer. Using blackmail as a tool, the drug kingpin meanwhile catches several police officers in his web. McAvoy himself becomes a target when his wife, Roisin, beats up a dealer who is attacking a friend accidentally in possession of some drugs and takes the money the dealer initially offered as a bribe before he lost his temper. Even though he and his family are is serious danger from the enigmatic drug kingpin, McAvoy can't let go of the complicated murder case. Compelling characters and a knotty mystery make the third from Mark (Original Skin, 2013, etc.) stand out from other procedurals.

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Starred review from May 1, 2014
In the third DS Aector McAvoy novel (following Original Skin, 2013), Mark goes borderline operatic. Economically devastated Hull, England, is being boiled by a sunless siege of heat and humidity. It's so extreme that residents begin to hope for thunderstorms that could inundate the flood-prone city. A new drug gang has routed its competition with nail guns and blowtorches and is showing that it has snitches in the police and influence in the courts. Despite the efforts of his guv, DI Trish Pharoah, to convince him of his worth, Aector is more riven by self-doubt than ever before. So, when a spectacularly brutal murder is quickly followed by two more, and Pharoah is pulled off the case by her superiors, Aector is on his own, hunting a deranged serial killer. This plot is stunningly convoluted, involving an outrage perpetrated a generation before that radiates outward like a tsunami caused by a mid-ocean earthquake. A separate plot involving the drug gang makes Aector's wife, Roisin, a target. The inevitable thunderstorm approaches biblical intensity, and Mark leaves the fates of Hull, Aector, and Roisin in doubt. Each McAvoy novel has been dark, but Sorrow Bound goes beyond dark to near-apocalyptic. Mark pulls it off, though, and fans of the giant Scottish detective will lose sleep reading this one.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2014

Too bad gray skies and an awful new drug lord are making things hard for DS Aector McAvoy in Hull, Yorkshire; there's also a serial killer to be caught. Mark has indeed made his mark in the UK, where the first in this series, Dark Winter, was a "Richard & Judy" book club pick and sold scads. The publisher is looking to break him out here.

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June 1, 2014

Oppressively muggy summer weather adds to the menacing atmosphere pervading Hull, a Yorkshire city plagued by the brutal violence of the new crew running the local drug trade. But soon DS Aector McAvoy and the entire Serious and Organized Crime Unit are distracted by even more heinous crimes--a string of murders that could be a sign of a serial killer at work. McAvoy believes the deaths to be copycat murders, retribution for the justice system's inept management of a serial rapist's case years ago. To complicate matters, the blackmail of McAvoy's colleague by the mysterious new boss of the drug ring puts McAvoy's lovely, young, Irish traveler wife and their children in grave danger. This third series entry (after The Dark Winter and Original Skin) would do nicely as a stand-alone as well. Mark's page-turning police procedural starring the appealing, if conflicted, McAvoy is a sure bet for fans of dark crime fiction set in Britain. Mark is particularly skilled at brief, effective characterization and at establishing an ominous, suspense-ridden setting in which his hero must struggle to reconcile his concept of justice and his admirable integrity with the evil that men do. VERDICT A satisfying read-alike for fans of Peter Robinson or Val McDermid. [See Prepub Alert, 2/15/14.]--Barbara Clark-Greene, Groton P.L., CT

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