Original Skin

by David Mark

Published 11 April 2013
From the author of the breakthrough crime debut of 2013, Dark Winter. Simon and Suzie are two pleasure seekers defined by their flamboyant tattoos. Peter Tressider is a politician on the fast track to the top. DS Aector McAvoy is a policeman with scars to his body and career. Each is marked in their own way. And soon each will be branded by the same sinister foe. Original Skin is a crime novel that leaves a permanent impression. Half serial killer thriller, half gritty police procedural, it examines the imprints that our darkest sins leave upon us, and just how far we will go to keep them covered.

Dark Winter

by David Mark

Published 29 March 2012
Hull, East Yorkshire. 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.

Sorrow Bound

by David Mark

Published 3 April 2014

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.


Dead Pretty

by David Mark

Published 28 January 2016
One girl missing. One girl dead. A stunning new novel from one of Britain's most original crime writers, Dead Pretty finds Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy and Detective Superintendent Trish Pharaoh grappling with vigilantes, unsolved murders, and a killer far too close to home.

While a colleague struggles to solve the recent killing of a man too vile to have mourners, Aector McAvoy, Detective Sergeant of the Humberside Police's murder squad, is still haunted by the past. His devotion to his cases is unshakeable, but it’s been nine months since Hannah Kelly disappeared in the quiet English countryside, and it is becoming harder to convince himself that she is just missing instead of dead... especially when another young woman is found brutally murdered.

As McAvoy looks for connections between the women, his boss Trish Pharaoh is preoccupied with troubles of her own. Reuben Hollow--a man convicted of murder with the help of perjured testimony from the Humberside Police--has just been released from prison after a high-profile wrongful conviction suit, putting Pharaoh's reputation at stake. But when her house is broken into and her children threatened, she soon learns it is not only her good name that’s in danger.

As the cases intertwine and Pharaoh’s behavior becomes more erratic, McAvoy must question who he can trust if he is to uncover Hannah's fate and find justice for the dead--without joining them himself.

Gritty, atmospheric, and endlessly entertaining, David Mark's Dead Pretty is an absorbing, twisty ride readers won’t soon forget.

Taking Pity

by David Mark

Published 2 July 2015

DS AECTOR MCAVOY BOOK FOUR: TAKING PITY TAKES READERS FURTHER ONTO THE RICHARD & JUDY FEATURING, SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AND KINDLE CHART-TOPPING STREETS OF HULL.

DS Aector McAvoy's family is in hiding. He has lost his way.

His boss Trish Pharaoh gives him a distraction in the form of an old case. The Winn family was killed forty years ago: were the police right about who pulled the trigger?

But McAvoy's enemies - the ruthless criminal organisation known as the Headhunters - are pitiless. They plan to take everything from those that stand in their way.

And his cold case is strangely linked with the fire that's about to rain down on Hull...

When McAvoy confronts the worst of killers and sinners, not everyone will escape unscathed.

Hooked on Hull? Then check out the fifth instalment in the DS McAvoy series, Dead Pretty...


Cold Bones

by David Mark

Published 24 January 2019

It's the coldest winter in Hull for years.

When McAvoy is told by a concerned stranger that an elderly woman hasn't been seen for a few days, he goes to check on her - only to find her in the bath, encased in ice: the heating off; the windows open; the whole house frozen over.

It could be a macabre accident, but McAvoy senses murder. Someone watched her die.

As he starts to uncover the victim's story and her connections to a lost fishing trawler, his boss Trish is half a world away, investigating a mysterious death in Iceland. Hull and Iceland have traditionally been united by fishing - in this case, they are linked by a secret concealed for half a century, and a series of brutal killings that have never been connected.

Until now - when the secrets of the dead have returned to prey on the living.

PRAISE FOR DAVID MARK

'Dark, compelling crime writing of the highest order' Daily Mail

'Truly exhilarating and inventive. Mark is a wonderfully descriptive writer and an exciting young talent.' Peter James

'Aficionados of the grittiest, most trenchant fare love Mark's copper Aector McAvoy, who customarily moves in a darkly realised Hull.' Financial Times


Cruel Mercy

by David Mark

Published 26 January 2017

Two men are taken into the woods. Forced to dig their own graves. But one of them survives the gunshot...

The two men travelled from Ireland to America with another man, now missing, presumed guilty. His name is Valentine Teague. Petty criminal, bare-knuckle fighter - and DS Aector McAvoy's brother in law.

Back home, Val's being held responsible for the blood spilt in the snowy woods of upstate New York. If McAvoy doesn't find out the truth, all hell will break loose, putting his own family in the crossfire.

Investigating proves harder than he could have imagined. New York City is a different world, with different rules. Soon, he finds himself up against squabbling cops, mafias old and new, and the culmination of a crime forty years in the making.

All McAvoy can do is the right thing. Even if it kills him...


Scorched Earth

by David Mark

Published 25 January 2018

Detective McAvoy investigates a murder and a missing person case in this dark and compelling thriller, for fans of Stuart MacBride and Peter May.

The police think Crystal Heathers isn't missing.

The trainee detective assigned to the case isn't so sure.

McAvoy thinks someone was being held at the derelict building where they just found a body pinned to the wall...and that all the signs point to it being a little girl.

But why would anyone not report a kidnapping?

And how far would someone go to get revenge?

The case will test McAvoy to breaking point - as the crimes of the present lead him to a final violent confrontation with an enemy from his own past.