Dark Winter by David Mark (Quercus)
by Patrick O'Connor
POLICE procedural novels are ten-a-penny these days and it's getting harder and harder to come up with something different.
Characterisation and location are key elements and writers have to shuffle this pack constantly to try and re-energise the genre.
Debut novelist David Mark has had a pretty good crack at it with this cop-hunts-serial-killer scenario set in the nondescript north eastern city of Hull a fortnight before Christmas.
Mark's protagonist is Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy, described as “big,barrel chested man...good-looking, even with the unruly hair and beard and broad, farmer's face. He must be an easy six-foot five, but there's a gentleness about his movements, his gestures, that suggests he is afraid of his own size; as if constantly apprehensive that he will break something more fragile than himself.'
McAvoy is happily married with a four year old son and a baby on the way but he is a man with a troubled past which is brought into focus when a 15 year old girl is brutally murdered in a city centre church.
The cop is a man obsessed with doing what is right and embarks on a quest to find the killer, a task made more complicated when further deaths occur but without any apparent link.
Mark is a former crime reporter and there is a steady, concise, journalistic style about his writing which maintains a cracking pace.
For those who like their crime thrillers, this is a first-class read and just to let you know, there are more McAvoy tales in the pipeline.