The Guest House - David Mark

David Mark can come up with some nasty characters involved in some gruesome dark crime situations in his DS McAvoy series, and some even more horrific scenarios in his standalone books, but he outdoes himself with the premise behind The Guest House, a dark tale involving the illicit dealing in body parts from unwilling and unwitting donors on a remote part of the Scottish west coast.

The police and special services have mounted a covert operation however including one agent deep undercover, Nicholas Roe. Unfortunately there are a number of innocent people involved, Ronnie, the owner of a little guest house in the area and her estranged husband Callum. Things aren't working out well not just in their marriage but with three kids to manage and anger issues to control over a cheating husband, Ronnie is finding it a struggle to keep the business going. Some of the current guests are a bit on the dodgy side too.

In some respect this is typical David Mark, on the one hand creating some wonderful fully developed human characters and on the other some incredibly nasty and ruthless pieces of work involved in dirty business that is off-the-scale in horrific. There is nonetheless something beautiful and even poetic in the author's writing with a wonderful eye for the importance and colour of the locale, and great skill with the deceptive ease in which he manages to bring all these contrasting parts and characters together. 

What Mark also brings to this - that I haven't seen in his writing before - is an interesting new venture into special operations and undercover operatives that has something of a Mick Herron flair. Throw that into the mix, along with Mark's humorous touch, and you've got another hugely enjoyable tense crime thriller that is wonderfully engaging and grimly compelling.

The Guest House, with one or two revisions, was previously self-published as Blood Money, so it's not a new Nicholas Roe novel, but hopefully there might be more books in this series.

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