The Dark Winter

Starred review from August 20, 2012
British crime reporter Mark's outstanding first novel, a suspenseful whodunit, introduces Det. Sgt. Aector McAvoy, who is struggling professionally after a tumultuous year that included his weeding out a pack of corrupt cops. While enjoying a treat at a Hull coffee shop with his four-year-old son, McAvoy hears frantic cries from the church across the square. He races into the church, where McAvoy is bowled over by the man who has just fatally stabbed 15-year-old Daphne Cotton on the altar steps. But soon another matter draws him away from the Cotton case: Fred Stein, the sole survivor of a 1968 collision at sea that claimed the lives of his fellow crew members, has apparently committed suicide after agreeing to assist a documentary filmmaker revisiting the naval tragedy. Readers will want to see more of the complicated McAvoy, who well serves a sophisticated and disturbing plot. Agent: Oliver Munson, Blake Friedmann Literary.

Starred review from September 15, 2012
Cops in the economically ravaged northern England city of Hull don't know what to think of the new detective who has joined the force. Aector McAvoy is a veritable giant, and there are vague rumors that he was nearly killed bringing down a rogue cop and a contract killer. But in Hull, he is a shy computer wizard who silently wishes he could spend all his time with his pregnant wife and young son. Then there's his name; Hull cops don't know it's a Scots spelling of Hector. But Aector is on the scene when a teenage girl is savagely murdered in Hull's most historic church, and it is Aector who discovers that the girl and subsequent victims were all survivors of previous fatal tragedies. And it is Aector who must end the murderous rampage. First-novelist Mark shrewdly makes Aector an enigma for readers, too, slowly building the conflicted hero throughout the book. Equally shrewdly, he gives Aector a tough and insightful female supervisor, who, after puckishly remarking he should have come with an owner's manual, ultimately unpacks her complex charge. Mark's years as a Hull journalist, his descriptions of a blighted city on the bones of its arse, and winter weather that ranges from merely dismal to brutal burnish an impressive debut. John Harvey readers should take note.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)