Vale of Tears - David Mark

We've arrived at book three-of-three in David Mark’s Sal Delaney series and there is one issue that surely every reader is eagerly looking to see resolved in Vale of Tears. Not will Wulf Hagman finally have his name cleared and his reputation restored in the realm of public opinion; not will Sal patch things up with her former lover who is still recovering from injury but maybe not recovered from his fling with Magda Quinn; not will we find out where Sal's twin brother Jarod has disappeared to and why; not even what is the story and his connection with Dagmara, who appears to be back to her old tricks as trailed at the end of book two (Don't Say a Word). Well, we expect answers to all those questions obviously, but paramount for me at least is will Magda Quinn get her comeuppance?

So there are a few things to tie up, and obviously the concluding episode in a trilogy is not a good place to start reading the series - so reading a review of it makes even less sense - but anyone else will know where that final sentiment comes from. Magda Quinn is the typical David Mark character that manages to get under your skin and raise your blood pressure, but being David Mark, he will either find a way to show a side to her that makes her half-way human if not entirely redeemable, but more likely he will make her even more hateful and taunt the reader with it, so it's uncertain whether he will provide any such comforting conclusion to that particular character arc. Life is like that sometimes and Mark is such a good observer of authentic character that he is not going to let convention dictate.

Neither of course am I going to say in a spoiler-free review whether he does or not, particularly as I've started writing the first two paragraphs after the first mention of her name in the book, as I don't trust myself to be able to write coherently if he starts to make her any more hateful - where's a trigger warning when you actually need one? But Quinn is a necessary character, since in a way it just makes you feel sorry for and feel even more sympathetic towards Sal Delaney, who is subject to the bullying behaviour of her superior officer. It's bullying moreover of a particularly personal and vicious nature, but you've got to admit that Sal’s troubled family connections make it easy for her. It's not strictly personal - well, it's very personal, I suppose - but more of a power trip that wants one particular result, which is the locking up (again) of Sal's Uncle Wulf.

So there's a lot of character dynamic here in the Sal Delaney series, but being David Mark there's a grizzly murder and a horrific death thrown in here and there as well. There is a killing in the deserted, very creepy house, somewhat appropriately known as 'Murder House' on Bael Hill Farm; a place with a dark occult history that was the scene of a notorious unsolved murder back in 1880. Sal is investigating a car accident in the vicinity when a fresh - or almost fresh - body is discovered there. They seem to have a habit of bodies rising out of the ground in this Cumbrian vale. This one has a group of children as witnesses, some of whom are currently under Sal’s care, and you can just imagine the sense of glee when Magda Quinn finds that out. She's going to be all over this like a plague.

While it had its share of police procedural murder investigation as well as collision investigation, the Sal Delaney trilogy has had more of a character of a remote country hotbed of gossip where everyone knows everyone's secrets, with only some of the worst still kept hidden deep and unspoken about. Poor Sal has been dealt a poor hand in that regard with her own personal history. The final book however feels more expansive, more complex in terms of character motivation and behaviour and morally more ambiguous. These questions, not least of having little choice in the family you belong to, are not simple and David Mark never treats them as such. It's this underlying tone of dealing with life that has dealt you a bad hand (as in another of my favourite underrated David Mark books Borrowed Time) that opens up avenues to complex characterisation that you won't find with most regular crime thrillers.

Vale of Tears has all that, as well as Mark’s unfailing ear for dialogue, dialect and its relation to the nature and folklore of the people of the district, in the borderlands of the north of England. There's a poetic side to that too and a sense of dark humour that is also intrinsic to the character of the region. Quinn is no caricature either - she has talent and knows how to use (or misuse) her talents to get what she wants, but she doesn't always get her own way. She's a DCI and is a smart investigator, but has some obsessional compulsion that twists her talents in a different direction. I can't believe I am making excuses for such a vile character, but that's David Mark for you, and it's what makes this book and its all-too-brief series exceptional and wholly engaging.

Reading notes: Vale of Tears - A Sal Delaney Mystery by David Mark is published by Severn House on the 2nd June. I was lucky to get closure on the issues I raised in the first paragraph early thanks to the publisher and NetGalley making a preview eBook available for review. I say closure and call this a trilogy elsewhere and "all-too-brief" series, but I hope that we might see more Sal Delaney mysteries in the future.