When Worlds Collide

Original Skin by David Mark

Original Skin is the second book in the Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy series, set in the gritty, down-at-heel northern England port city of Hull. The debut book, The Dark Winter, introduced us to this very different kind of copper.

Aector is a lumbering, gentle giant, with a face that semaphores his every emotion. This embarrasses him, since he prefers not to draw attention to himself:

"Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy spent his first months in plain clothes taking the title literally. He all but camouflaged himself in khaki-coloured trousers, hiking boots and cheap, mushroom-hued shirts; tearing them fresh from polythene packets every Monday. The disguise never worked. At 6 foot 5 inches, and with red hair, freckles and a Highlander moustache, he is always the most noticeable man in the room."

The Dark Winter started with a hard-to-take crime, the public murder of a young girl, but Original Skin begins on an even darker note. A young, elaborately tattooed gay man, Simon Appleyard, extends an online invitation to a stranger to come and engage in a bit of BDSM. The stranger strangles Simon with Simon's own belt, staging the scene to make it look like a session of autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong. The authorities take a brief look at the sordid scene and are only too willing to take it at face value. But Simon's similarly flamboyantly inked friend, Suzie, who is also a regular at the sex clubs and anonymous BDSM hookup scene, is being text-stalked by someone who seems to be connected with that demimonde, and Suzie thinks that "X" is out to get her, just like Simon.

Aector's primary assignment at the moment is investigating the insanely violent drug war that has broken out in the marijuana market. The cannabis-growing and -marketing business had been dominated by old-school local criminals and Vietnamese immigrants, but it looks like they're being muscled out by some new crowd that delivers its eviction notices with nail guns to the body. Aector is committed to the investigation, but he feels compelled to spend his almost-nonexistent spare time looking into Simon Appleyard's death.

He's like that. Despite being surrounded by tough-as-nails colleagues, and dealing with scuzzy informants and combative villains on a daily basis, he hasn't learned to be cynical. He is a compassionate soul, and downright naïve at times. As if these two investigations aren't taxing enough, local politicians begin to feature in the inquiries––and these politicos play the game like a blood sport.

As in The Dark Winter, Aector's refuge from the trials of his job is his home, with his wife Roisin, who comes from a "Traveller" family, and their two small children. In this book, we learn a little more about Roisin's past and about the Traveller world she came from. Learning a lot more is something I look forward to in future books. Roisin is a tiny creature, and not just in comparison to Aector, but her personality is big and she's as outspoken as Aector is reserved:

"It was his young wife, Roisin, who put at stop to his attempts to blend in. She told him that, as a good-looking big bastard, he owed it to himself not to dress like a 'fecking bible-selling eejit.' Roisin has a way with words."

In many ways, each thread of the plot is about the clash of different worlds. The social values of the Travellers are sometimes so opposed to Aector's that the difference threatens his relationship with Roisin. The drug war represents a new, highly organized and shadowy criminal hierarchy displacing the old-time, homegrown villains. The sex scene where Simon and Suzie were regulars had seemed like an environment to play at taking risks, but was now confronted by a new element that turned the play-acting risks real––and deadly.

A more comic-relief kind of clash occurs in Aector's relationship with his brash boss, Trish Pharaoh. The two couldn't be more different, which is probably why they work so well together. Though, I suppose, "well" might not be the correct adverb for a relationship in which Aector's guilelessness frequently prompts Pharaoh to tell him that she badly wants to club him over the head.

The bleakness of Hull and its sordid and violent crimes make this dark reading, lightened by the Trish-and-Aector byplay and several other Aector moments. Somehow, Aector always seems to stumble into the oddest situations: having to chase down a runaway horse in city traffic and horse-whisper him into compliance, thus saving the horse from a tranquilizer-gun shot at best; being challenged to a bare-knuckled fight that Roisin tells him he is honor-bound to accept; bringing cops and suspects home for breakfast with the wife and playtime with the kids. It all makes Aector a crime-novel protagonist you'd like to sit down with for a pint––but probably wouldn't want to be partnered with, either at work or at home.

Original Skin was issued May 16, 2013, by Blue Rider Press (an imprint of the Penguin Group). If you're looking for a refreshingly different protagonist and a gritty, north-of-England style police procedural, give the Aector McAvoy series a try.

Note: I received a free publisher's review copy of Original Skin. Versions of this review may appear on Amazon, Goodreads and other review sites, under my usernames there.

Book Review of David Mark's The Dark Winter

The Dark Winter by David Mark

In the economically depressed port city of Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy enjoys some chocolate cake in a coffee shop with his four-year-old son. Despite the December cold, they sit outside, on the old square, to get a bit of the sun that is in such short supply so far north at this time of year. Aector's moment of domestic pleasure is cut short by screams from the church across the square. He runs to the church and is himself attacked by a hooded man rushing away. Inside, there is a horrific scene of carnage; Daphne Cotton, just 15 years old, has been hacked to death with a machete.

Aector, a member of the police department's serious crimes unit, is put on the team investigating Daphne's murder. Aector has a special status, since he was face-to-face with the killer, but it soon becomes obvious to the reader that's not all that sets him apart. In the past, he exposed an important cop's corruption, and now he's paying the price. He's looked at with suspicion by many, respect by a few, but given a wide berth by almost everyone. Though not by his boss, Trish Pharaoh. Pharaoh, a tough-talking, hard-drinking woman, calls Aector "natural police" and gives him free reign in the investigation.

Pharaoh's confidence is tested when Aector takes time out from the critical Daphne Cotton investigation to follow up on the apparent suicide of Fred Stein, a retired North Sea fisherman, at the same remote ocean location where Stein had been the sole survivor of a commercial trawler sinking 40 years before. Aector has an unaccountable feeling that there is a connection between Daphne's murder and Stein's death; a feeling that strengthens into conviction when another strange death occurs.

Author David Mark, a crime reporter, delivers a page-turner of a plot and a refreshing new protagonist in his debut novel. In retrospect, I suppose the story is pretty far-fetched, but that didn't prevent me from shutting myself away from all distractions and staying up way later than I'd intended so that I could finish the book.

UK book jacket says it's as good as
 Peter Robinson––or your money back!

Aector McAvoy is a big, powerful man, but quiet and self-effacing. Despite his past troubles, he hasn't turned to the dubious comforts of drink or drugs, the way so many modern fictional detectives do. His sanctuary is at home, with his wife, Roisin, and his son. Just don't get the idea he's nothing but a big softy, though. He'll wade into physical combat if necessary, and he won't back down from what he feels he has to do, no matter how staunch the opposition. Pharaoh warns him that there is always a price to pay for being a man who cares passionately about doing the right thing. Aector knows she's right, but "somebody has to give a damn," and that somebody has always been––and always will be––Aector.

According to Wikipedia, the city of Hull "is sunnier than most areas this far north in the British Isles, and also considerably drier, due to the rain shadowing effect of the Pennines." You'd never know from reading The Dark Winter that Hull enjoys such a congenial climate. I had to crank up the thermostat and turn on all the lights to combat the cold, wet gloom that rose off every page. This book can rival any Nordic mystery for chill and clouded atmosphere.

The Humber Bridge, opened in 1981, was the longest
single-span suspension bridge in the world for 16 years

Crime fiction readers have become familiar with Yorkshire through the late Reginald Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe, Stuart Pawson's Charlie Priest, Peter Robinson's Alan Banks and others, and now David Mark brings the county's Hull into the action. This port city, a former industrial and maritime powerhouse, in decline since the 1970s, but filled with rough beauty, makes an ideal setting for the gritty realism of Mark's storytelling. I hope we can expect to see Aector McAvoy, Trish Pharaoh––and Hull––again.

The Dark Winter was published in the US on October 25, 2012 by Blue Rider Press, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA).

Note: I received a free review copy of The Dark Winter from the publisher. A version of this review may also appear on Amazon and other sites under my user names there.