Will I love The Dark Winter?

It’s always strange when another writer tackles the same city you’re mapping, but it’s also a reminder that we see places in fundamentally different ways. I write about Hull as an insider looking out with David taking the opposite approach, arriving in the city as a journalist. In the debut outing for DI Aector McAvoy, it may be his writing background that allows him to look the place in the eye and draw a fantastically vivid city dealing with multiple social issues, but also one in which he finds its heart packed with spirit and hope.

The backdrop for this book is Hull, described by its hero, Detective Sergeant McAvoy as… “last stop before the sea, on the road to nowhere… falling to bloody pieces.” McAvoy is first on the scene when a young girl is killed in Hull’s historic church and stumbles across a killer who’s playing God. If you enjoy a classic police protagonist then McAvoy’s for you; an outsider with a troubled past, an unerring sense of justice, and a mission to be a good man in a corrupt world. And the tight plotting will have you endlessly turning the pages long after… show more.