Hull, northern England. Two weeks before Christmas. Three bodies in the morgue. The victims - each a sole survivor of a past tragedy - killed in the manner they once cheated death. Somebody is playing God. And it falls to DS Aector McAvoy to stop their deadly game.



“Compelling… Richly satisfying and told with remarkable flair.” —Daily Mail (UK)

When “swinger” Simon Appleyard is found strung-up and naked in his apartment, the authorities are only too happy to chalk it up to suicide. After all, a new gang has taken over the local drug trade, and Detective Superintendant Trish Pharaoh’s Serious and Organized Crime Unit is run ragged. A murder investigation is the last thing they need.
But more bodies begin to surface, and all are somehow connected to the underground erotic scene. Although Detective Sargeant Aector McAvoy would be perfectly content to stay home with his wife and their newborn baby, he begins to suspect that murder is just the beginning. As his investigation brings him uncomfortably close to the local political elite, McAvoy realizes he is hunting a sadistic killer with a lust that won’t be satisfied until the River Humber runs red.



Philippa Longman will do anything for her family.

Roisin McAvoy will do anything for her friends.

DS Aector McAvoy will do anything for his wife.

Yet each has an unknown enemy – one that will do anything to destroy them.

Sorrow Bound is a powerful police procedural thriller about how those with the biggest hearts make the easiest targets; and how the corrosive venom of evil can dissolve the bonds between good people, until all they are bound by is grief.



The New York Times *hails David Mark’s police thrillers as “in the honorable tradition of Joseph Wambaugh and Ed McBain.” In Taking Pity, Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy returns for another darkly enthralling installment of this internationally acclaimed series.*

It's been three months since Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy returned home, or to what was left of it after a horrific tragedy. All that remained was charred masonry, broken timbers, and dried blood--a crude reminder of the home invasion and explosion that tore his family apart. McAvoy's wife and daughter are safe, he's been assured; he just wishes he knew where they were.

As McAvoy wrestles with his guilt, self-hatred, and helplessness, trouble persists in stormy Hull. Organized crime emerges as the city's latest threat, with two warring factions leaving plenty of bodies for Detective Superintendent Trish Pharaoh and her unit to clean up. Now more than ever, Pharaoh needs her sergeant to return to work and be a policeman again. She gives McAvoy a case that's supposed to ease him back into the game: a reinvestigation of a rural quadruple murder that was put to bed fifty years ago. But what was supposed to be a cut-and-dried job quickly unravels as McAvoy digs up new evidence and witness testimonies, steering closer to some of the most notorious criminals in northern England.

Fast-paced, noir-ish, and fresh off the heels of Sorrow Bound's violent finale, Taking Pity is the latest page-turning installment in the gripping Detective McAvoy series. Hailed by The New York Times as being "in the honorable tradition of Joseph Wambaugh and Ed McBain," David Mark's police procedurals are smart, dark, and above all, wholly captivating.