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    The Dark Winter: A Novel
    The Dark Winter: A Novel
    The Dark Winter: A Novel
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Dark Winter: A Novel

    Written by David Mark

    Narrated by John Curless

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    series of suspicious deaths have rocked Hull, a port city in England as old and mysterious as its bordering sea. They have captured the attention of Detective Sergeant aector McAvoy. He notices a pattern missed by his fellow officers, who would rather get a quick arrest than bother themselves with finding the true killer. Torn between his police duties and his aching desire to spend more time with his pregnant wife and young son, McAvoy is an unlikely hero: a physically imposing man far more comfortable exploring computer databases than throwing around his muscle. Compelled by his keen sense of justice, he decides to strike out alone-- but in the depths of the dark winter, it' s difficult to forget what happened the last time he found himself on the wrong side of a killer' s blade
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateOct 25, 2012
    ISBN9781470323981
    The Dark Winter: A Novel
    Author

    David Mark

    David Mark spent seven years as crime reporter for the Yorkshire Post and now writes full-time. The first novel in his DS McAvoy series, Dark Winter, was selected for the Harrogate New Blood panel (where he was Reader in Residence) and was a Richard & Judy pick and a Sunday Times bestseller. Dead Pretty was longlisted for the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger in 2016. He lives in Northumberland with his family.

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    Reviews for The Dark Winter

    4/5

    16 ratings15 reviews

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    • 4/5
      What a refreshing change it is to have a detective in this genre who isn't the stereotypical flawed maverick with an idiosyncratic style and a drinking problem. I found McAvoy a likeable but rounded character, and the premise of a murderer wiping out lucky survivors of tragedies was fascinating. Mark avoided falling into the "grittiness" trap, which must have been tempting when dealing with towns like Hull and Grimsby, yet still presented a realistic picture of these locales. I found the book very well written, and the plot was engaging, interesting and believable for the most part.
    • 4/5
      The Dark Winter by David Mark is actually the first book in his DS Aector McAvoy series, and in this first outing McAvoy is part of the team that is investigating a series of suspicious deaths that have the Northern English city of Hull on high alert. When McAvoy realizes that these murders are the work of one person, they realize they are on the trail of a serial killer who targets previous victims and them kills them in the way they were originally attacked.This book is also the introduction to Det. Sgt. McAvoy who is struggling professionally after a difficult year that included his reporting on a group of corrupt cops. He has a strong belief in justice and this has made him a bit of an outsider with the other police officers. He does however, have a very good relationship with his wife and they are expecting a second child, to go along with their 4 year old son. I had quite mixed feelings about this book, finding it rather slow moving and considering the subject matter, not particularly suspenseful. I did think the writing was quite good but the self-doubt of the main character was a bit off-putting and the resolution to the story felt rushed. Currently I am far more invested in many of the other series that I am reading so at this point I am not planning on continuing on with this series.
    • 5/5
      I’m always a little dubious when I’m told that ‘only’ one person can join the dots.What, exactly, makes DS Aector McAvoy so special that he is the only police officer able to see a connection between three seemingly disparate murders? It seems to be his conscience and a determination, sadly not shared by all his fellow officers, to catch the actual killer, rather than the most likely suspect. I’m fairly sure this shouldn’t make him such an unusual police officer…but apparently it does David Marks’ vision of policing in Hull.== What’s it about? ==A man who nearly died 40 years ago dies in eerily similar circumstances to his original near-death incident. Could this be a meaningful suicide perpetrated by a guilty survivor? Meanwhile a young girl is brutally murdered inside a busy church and it quickly transpires that she survived a similar attack as a baby. Could this be a bizarre coincidence? Well, this is a crime novel, so I think you can guess the answer to those two questions. When another survivor dies in eerily similar circumstances to those he had previously escaped, it appears that McAvoy’s bosses may finally be ready to listen to him. Of course, McAvoy is a sole survivor himself, so perhaps he won’t need to hunt too hard for the killer…== What’s it like? ==Emotional. Reliant on coincidence and instinct. Violent. (One victim has her rapist’s initials carved into her genitalia.)McAvoy just happens to be the man dispatched to inform the ex naval officer’s sister that his disappearance is now a death (his superiors like to keep him out of the way as punishment for ‘grassing’ on a senior officer last year); he also just happens to be first on the scene when the girl is attacked in the church and is struck by the killer as a result. This is how he is able to start making links between the two cases and his own experiences, and the story continues in much the same veinIf you don’t mind a few doses of coincidence then you’re likely to enjoy the intriguing premise. Who would want to kill sole survivors of terrible events? What possible motivation could they have? I actually really liked the final answer to this, though it is arguably as far-fetched as, well, everything else that happens in the story.While McAvoy attempts to single-handedly manage the cases in the way he feels they should be handled, he brushes up against new boss, ‘Pharaoh’, in a unit rife with political tensions and ripe for backstabbing. Quite why there has to be sexual tension introduced between the characters I don’t know, especially since McAvoy practically worships his young wife and the proper storyline has to take a break at one point so they can have a baby related trauma. Is this frisson between the officers meant to emphasise the apparently corrupt / corrupting nature of the Hull police force or are we just to assume once again that a handsome man and powerful woman can’t work together without contemplating how much they might enjoy each other naked? Either way, it irritated me.== Final thoughts ==This is a deeply emotional story. McAvoy wrestles with his conscience, his colleagues and his inability to always be there for his precious family (he abandons his son at a cafe to sprint to the murder at the church without a second thought) and even the killer is racked with emotion mid and post-kill. (‘There were tears in his eyes’, McAvoy notes, with the ‘sudden sense’ that this is important.) The resolution is interesting, though the final chapter is unnecessary, and if you like your crime thrillers violent and mildly philosophical, then this one’s for you.
    • 4/5
      I really liked 'The Dark Winter', at least the first 90% or so of it. Well-written, an intricate plot, an interesting location, good character development, and the good guys win- literally, all the things I look for when experiencing a new author for the first time. David Mark is definitely a writer I want to see more from in the future.

      The main characters, especially McAvoy (especially) and Pharoah were very well done. Good rapport between them, plus a smattering of sexual tension helped move the story forward whenever it felt like the investigation was slowing down. Without getting into the specifics of the plot, my favorite aspect of this book was McAvoy's making the logical leaps that often sound pretty straightforward on the page but in the real world are more difficult to make in real time.

      My only problem with the story, and I have this same issue whenever it happens in a book or on the screen, is when a great procedural gets to a point where something 'magical' or just plain lucky happens that accelerates the arc of the story. Without spoiling the plot, there's a point toward the end where McAvoy literally stumbles into something that probably would have been resolved if the procedural had just continued. It may have reduced the number of pages required to reach a similar point, but seemed really unlikely to have actually occurred.

      All-in-all, a really good read by a new author.
    • 3/5
      The Dark Winter is the first book in the Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy series and is the weakest of the four I have read to date. In it, we are introduced to McAvoy, a "gentle giant" figure who is devoted to his wife and children but is being treated as a pariah by many of his colleagues because he outed the senior members of his team for police corruption. For his first case with the new Serious and Organized Crime Unit headed by Detective Superintendent Trish Pharaoh, McAvoy must solve a series of murders which may be related to another series of crimes years earlier.I had two major complaints with The Dark Winter. First the killer was obvious the minute he was mentioned (as was his endgame, which McAvoy inexplicably did not see coming). This is not always a fatal flaw for me in a police procedural, particularly if the characters themselves are well-developed, which leads me to my second complaint: none of Mark's characters have more than two dimensions. I realize that we are just getting to know McAvoy in this book, but I didn't find out enough about him to care about him. Mark has made a fundamental error by not giving us more information about McAvoy's background, especially with respect to his role in the corruption scandal; without such grounding, McAvoy's strained interpersonal relationships with his co-workers simply don't ring true and do not arouse the reader's sympathy. Along the same lines, I was dismayed at the hints of a sexual or romantic attraction between McAvoy and Pharaoh, which clashed uncomfortably with McAvoy's otherwise consistent (almost to the point of boredom) portrayal as a strong moral figure.What redeemed the series for me was Mark's decision not to go with the easy and expected resolution. This flash of the unexpected (not to mention my having already agreed to review books 3 and 4) means that I will be turning my attention next to Original Skin, the second McAvoy installment.
    • 4/5
      Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy is a smart and loveably human lead character, haunted by his past and often torn between family and duty. His instincts as a "natural" cop often run him afoul of his boss and coworkers, when he refuses to follow the official plan or instructions, but focuses instead on bringing the right person to justice at all costs. The other characters, be they suspects, witnesses, or cops, all have believable details to bring them to life. The landscape of the setting is almost a character itself, serving to drive the plot in some instances. Although the connection between the murders becomes obvious fairly early on, the true motive and who is behind them remains a point of suspense until almost the very end, revealed through a fast-paced sequence of events. In this debut novel, David Mark has created not only a strong protagonist but a strong case for a continued series of detective fiction.

      Those who enjoy Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache series might want to give Detective Sergeant McAvoy a try as well.
    • 4/5
      Hull, East Yorkshire. Two weeks before Christmas, an elderly man - the only survivor of a fishing trawler tragedy 40 years before - is found murdered at sea. In a church, a young girl - the last surviving member of a family slaughtered during the conflict in Sierra Leone - is hacked to death with a machete. A junkie, who fled the burning house where he had set his family alight, is found incinerated on a rundown council estate. Someone is killing sole survivors in the manner they had escaped death. And it falls to Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy of Humberside CID to find out whom. McAvoy, despite being a six-foot-five, man mountain of a police officer, is not your typical bullish detective. A shy, gentle giant, he is a family man obsessed with being a good and decent cop; more dab hand with a database than gung-ho with a gun - traits that have seen him become increasingly isolated from his colleagues in the force. Desperate to prove his worth, McAvoy knows he must establish the motive behind the killings if he is to have any chance of pinning the perpetrator. And he must do so quickly, as this twisted yet ingenious killer appears to have an appetite for murder.

      Hmm just what I needed … another “first book in a series featuring a charismatic detective…”

      I really didn’t want to get ‘involved’ with another detective series just now but so glad I did. The author has written an excellent debut novel. Set in a bleak, wintery Hull, the novel introduces DS Aector McAvoy, gentle giant and loving husband and father just trying to get on with his job. He is investigating a series of killings in which the victims are all sole survivors of past tragedies, including the sinking of a trawler, a massacre in Sierra Leone and a domestic fire.
      Tight plotting, strong characters and beautiful writing ensured that it was a thoroughly enjoyable read. Looking forward to the next one…

      See what happens …hooked in again…..


    • 4/5
      This is a very good debut novel by an author local to my area so it was nice to recognise the places mentioned. Spot on David, you have the local characters and attitudes perfect. At first, I couldn't identify with the main character but Inspector McAvoy definately grows on you. The plot was both unusual and excellent and I would hope to see more from this author.
    • 4/5
      My knowledge of Hull, a formerly bustling fishing port on the Humber Estuary, is limited - I made a couple of very brief visits more than thirty years ago, principally for the purpose of driving over the graceful Humber Bridge. I would have to say that David Mark's grim novel is not exactly going to send me scurrying back - throughout the book, set in the run up to Christmas, one can almost feel the piercing cold that relentlessly grips the city.The plot revolves around a series of particularly brutal murders that are investigated by Detective Sergeant Aector (a Gaelic forename) McEvoy, raised in the Scottish Highlands and come to rest in Hull. This is the first novel in what promises to be an intriguing series, and McEvoy already has a fair amount of baggage behind him. There are passing references to estrangement from his father, a crofter in the Western Isles, and also to incident the previous year in which McEvoy uncovered corruption among his CID colleagues which led to a the demise of senior officers and his own ostracisation. He takes comfort in his blissful marriage to Roisin, formerly part of a travelling community, and their three year old son Finlay. McEvoy is out with Finlay as the novel opens, with the two of them waiting in a city centre cafe for Roisin, when all at once they hear some screaming from the nearby Hull Cathedral. McEvoy momentarily forgets his paternal duties and runs towards the incident, only to be knocked to the floor by a fleeing man who, it transpires, has just killed a choir girl. This is merely the first of a serious of increasingly brutal and beguiling murdersMcEvoy is an engaging character - flawed, but not wrecked, and essentially empathetic in his treatment of his family, fellow officers, and even suspects. Unusual, but without the irritating quirkiness of far too many fictional detectives these days. I am looking forward to future volumes.
    • 4/5
      Fred Stein is on a ship near Iceland, talking to a TV reporter about a shipwreck 40 years ago. He goes on deck for a bit of air and never returns. His body is found several days later in a lifeboat.Detective Aector McAvoy is sitting in an outdoor square, two weeks before Christmas, with his young son when he hears a scream coming from the church across the square. Running towards the sound, he gets bowled over by a man running from the church. When McAvoy comes to, he finds that fifteen year old Daphne Cotton has been mortally stabbed numerous times.These two seemingly unrelated deaths form the basis of The Dark Winter by debut British novelist David Mark, who was a journalist for 15 years before becoming turning to mystery writing. McAvoy is a timid giant, having requested the Serious Crimes Unit as a way of disassociating himself with a previous act of catching a serial killer and ratting on a corrupt cop. He's a man with principles, but a misfit, so he thinks, within the Serious Crimes Unit, as is his boss, Trish Pharoah, promoted into the spot over other senior officers who thought she'd fail. But, neither McAvoy nor Pharoah accept failure.I'm always interested in a new mystery series, and although I'm typically not a British mystery fan (yes I do like Peter Robinson), The Dark Winter was a grand read. McAvoy and Pharoah are headstrong cops who care about catching the real killer, not just chalking up another closed case. They're human. They're intelligent.The Dark Winter has interesting characters, a believable plot, a fair amount of action. Readers will be drawn to both McAvoy and Pharoah, as well as the rest of the team. It's nice to see a 'regular guy' as a policeman, a man with doubts, desires, principles and a family man in total love with his wife and son.Not that I need another mystery series to keep up with, but I'd certainly welcome a second McAvoy/Pharoah book. I highly recommend this.
    • 4/5
      I found the writing style a bit peculiar, in the present tense, but the characters were sufficiently intriguing to keep reading. Something about the detective and his marital relationship just did not ring true.
    • 5/5
      Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy comes to Hull's Serious and Organised Crime Unit under a bit of a cloud, a whistle blower, who exposed corruption in some of the most popular on Hull's force. Conversations cease when he walks into a room, people are obviously watching him. McAvoy likes Nielsen. He’s one of the half-dozen new faces brought in six months back by the brass to try and wipe out the stench of the bad old days. The era that had both made and cost McAvoy his name. Nailed him as the copper who cost a detective superintendent his job and sparked an internal investigation that scattered a crooked team of CID officers to the four winds. Who managed to glide through the whole thing without a blemish on his written record. He’s the copper who did for Doug Roper, the copper who nearly died out at the woods beneath the Humber Bridge, at the hands of a man whose crimes will never be known by anybody other than a handful of senior officers who stitched his face up more expertly than the doctors at Hull Royal. He’s the copper who refused to take up the offer of an easy transfer to a cosy community station. Who now finds himself on a team that doesn’t trust him, working for a boss who doesn’t rate him, and trying to blend into the background while carrying a Samsonite satchel with adjustable straps and waterproof bloody pockets … I enjoyed this book from beginning to end. It is a police procedural with a difference. It starts with an intriguing case - a trawler man who survived a wreck 40 years before, goes overboard during the making of a video about events during The Dark Winter.Aector McAvoy is hard to miss for he is big.. The waitress surveys him. This big, barrel-chested man in the designer double-breasted coat. Good-looking, even with the unruly hair and broad, farmer’s face. He must be an easy six-foot-five, but there’s a gentleness about his movements, his gestures, that suggest he is afraid of his own size; as if constantly apprehensive that he will break something more fragile than himself. She can’t place his accent any more accurately than ‘posh’ and ‘Scottish’. She casts another glance over his well-muscled body, his thick, bullish neck, his round, square-jawed face, which, in this light, seems striped with the faintest of scars. One of the things about beginning a new series, for I am sure this is the beginning of one, is meeting new characters, and I think they are rarely as well described as these are.In the wake of the whistle blowing the Serious and Organised Crime Unit got a new boss: Trish Pharaoh was an unexpected choice and she is turning out to be far more assertive and feisty than her bosses thought she would. She too is an interesting character: a mother of 4 who tends to treat her team as she does her children.If you like police procedurals with unusual characters and unusual incidents you'll like this one.
    • 1/5
      THE DARK WINTER by David Mark is a mystery, the first book in a projected series with Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy as the main character. He's a big man on the outside with a little man on the inside. Mark says so. McAvoy strives to be politically correct and proper. He is also timid. But intuition is his gift. He intuitively connects murder cases even though no one case has anything to do with another. He intuitively knows that the third and fourth murder attempts will occur and in what order. He either smells (nonexistent) blood or feels it rushing to his head. Then he gets the feeling something is up and, timidly, he acts on the feeling. So, even while he is in charge of the database and the phones or spending time with his hospitalized wife, he alone puts it all together.But there are holes. For example, when someone dressed all in black, including a cap that covers his head, neck, and shoulders, suddenly appears in a church full of people, why doesn't a single congregant notice? And when he uses a machete to kill a girl, why do none of those people come to the girls' aid? Instead, a timid giant, McAvoy, comes running from across the street.This book is silly and too easily put down.This is an honest review. I won THE DARK WINTER from the publisher through booktrib.com.
    • 5/5
      First Line: The old man looks up, and for a moment it feels as though he is staring through the wrong end of a telescope. A young girl adopted from Sierra Leone is hacked to death in full view of the congregation at Holy Trinity Church in the center of Hull. Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy is assigned to the task force looking for the killer and fully expects to spend his time manning the phones and making sure everyone enters all their information in the database. Before he gets fully settled in, the Assistant Chief Commissioner asks him to take care of a death notification. Although it puts him in hot water with his superior, McAvoy does so and learns about an old man who, forty years earlier, had been the sole survivor of a ship wreck. The old man had agreed to be interviewed for a documentary and was with the film crew aboard an Icelandic container ship when he cut filming short and went outside for some air. A few days later, his body was found floating in a life raft.The more McAvoy learns about both deaths, the more convinced he is that the two are related... and then a third death occurs, and the race is on to catch a killer who has a very singular objective. Well, at least the race is on with Aector. Some of his fellow officers seem more interested in a quick arrest than in finding the real killer.I slid into this story effortlessly. Aector isn't your normal police officer. He doesn't smoke. He seldom drinks. He loves his pregnant wife and young son to distraction, and they love him every bit as much. He's what his boss DCI Patricia Pharaoh calls "a natural policeman"-- somehow it's in McAvoy's blood to feel the links between disparate facts, to insist upon seeing the right person in prison for committing a crime-- but he's a bit of a mystery and a joke amongst his co-workers.There are whispers and rumors galore throughout the police station about McAvoy: that he turned in one of their own, that he's not to be trusted, that the only thing he's good for is answering phones and sitting at a computer. Then there's the matter of his size. He's a red-headed 6 foot five inch bear of a man who avoids using any semblance of force. There wouldn't be so many questions and rumors about McAvoy if the people he worked with knew more about the man, but they don't, so suspicion persists.It was a sheer delight to begin to put the bits and pieces of information about McAvoy together as the story progressed. He is a fascinating, complex character. The identity of the killer was genuinely puzzling throughout, and some of the action sequences in the book actually made me gasp aloud as I read them. (I'm not a screamer, and I don't gasp, so you can use this as an indication of how far into the story I was!)Above the characters and the killings, the atmosphere of Hull lies over everything like a grimy blanket of snow. Hull, a once thriving city until the fishing industry collapsed and sounded a death knell. Hull, full of history, full of hope-- and hopefully full of many future cases for DS Aector McAvoy to investigate. David Mark's debut novel has me hooked, and I want more!
    • 4/5
      For a debut fiction novel this is a very good police procedural. Definitely character based as the main character McAvoy has a very moral sense of right and wrong, he is not satisfied with east answers but wants the truth. Has an interesting home life as well. Different threads of the story eventually connect and the trail McAvoy follows is not without personal cost. Really enjoyed following the trail and I did not guess the who done it. Look forward to his next outing which I will be watching for.