David Mark (Taking Pity) ventures into the dark corners of human evil in his twisted crime thriller Cruel Mercy. The fifth novel in the Detective Sergeant McAvoy series, it finds the resilient Scottish detective embroiled in a mob plot gone haywire in New York City. McAvoy is called in to assist NYPD Detective Ronny Alto investigate the murder of boxing protégé Shay Helden, and the near-fatal maiming of the man's coach, Brishen Ayres. Both victims have connections to McAvoy's family back in England, including his missing brother-in-law, Valentine Teague. McAvoy quickly learns the brutal crime involves not only the deepest levels of New York organized crime, but also the local Catholic parish and a series of bizarre ritualistic killings.
For this installment of the McAvoy series, Mark couldn't have conjured a more complicated plot, yet he pulls it off, successfully head-hopping from one character to the next in order to weave a sinister tapestry of motives and murder. Point-of-view passages from victims are harrowing and display Mark's talent for internal monologue and characterization. His external scenes are just as convincing, peppered with quick-witted dialogue and blunt yet brilliant metaphors. Falling snow in the city is likened to "a plague of butterflies," and prayers are described as "urgent, skittish things, specters born behind locked teeth." Mark is able to turn his language on a dime and evoke a pervasive sense of evil. As much as Cruel Mercy is an elaborate crime saga, it's also a story of occult horror loaded with lurid religious themes. It's a brutal, bloody read, brimming with gothic splendor. --Scott Neuffer, freelance journalist and fiction author.