Scorched Earth – David Mark
Although many of the basic impulses and methods remain the same - lust, greed, power, revenge - the nature of crime changes all the time. You’ll know that if you watch the news on any given evening, but there aren’t as many variations of the subject in crime fiction as you might think. David Mark on the other hand seems to be more creative with the world of crime in the modern age in his DS McAvoy series, and perhaps the setting of Hull and the investigations of the Humberside Police have something to do with it. What is clear however is that Mark is often as strong on the mindsets and motivations of his main characters as he is on the criminals they run up against. That originality in purpose and style is immediately apparent in David Mark’s latest DS McAvoy book, Scorched Earth . The book opens with the seemingly motiveless killing of a Sudanese refugee at the Jungle camp near Calais by another asylum seeker from Mozambique, followed by a kidnapping in rural Lincolnshire on a horse r...