Martyn Waites Books In Order

Joe Donovan Books In Publication Order

  1. The Mercy Seat (2006)
  2. Bone Machine (2007)
  3. White Riot (2008)
  4. Speak No Evil (2009)

Stephen Larkin Books In Publication Order

  1. Mary’s Prayer (1997)
  2. Little Triggers (1998)
  3. Candleland (2000)
  4. Born Under Punches (2003)

Tom Killgannon Books In Publication Order

  1. The Old Religion (2018)
  2. The Sinner (2020)

The Woman in Black Books In Publication Order

  1. The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story (By:Susan Hill) (1983)
  2. The Woman in Black: Angel of Death (2013)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. The White Room (2004)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. Great Lost Albums (With: Mark Billingham,David Quantick,Stav Sherez) (2014)

Joe Donovan Book Covers

Stephen Larkin Book Covers

Tom Killgannon Book Covers

The Woman in Black Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Martyn Waites Books Overview

The Mercy Seat

‘Martyn Waites stands out in the crowded field of young British noir writers…
with his bruised characters, raw edged dialogue, and extraordinary night vision.’ The New York Times Book Review

‘London’s dark heart has seldom been exposed with such surgical precision. Brutal, mesmerizing stuff.’ Ian Rankin

‘A huge talent.’ TimeOut London

‘One of the brightest stars in the British crime writing firmament.’ John Connolly

A research scientist has gone missing. An ace newspaper reporter has disappeared; so has a minidisc, along with its incriminating evidence. And a teenage hustler is on the run. In his pursuer, the Hammer, a skin headed professional killer with a blue sapphire tooth and a taste for death metal, ‘the principle of evil’ has indeed been ‘made flesh.’

From its staggering opening to an electrifying finish, its prose pumping adrenaline all the way, Martyn Waites’ new novel wrests former investigative journalist Joe Donovan out of his reclusion in Newcastle. His heart broken by the disappearance of his six year old son two years earlier a case that remains unsolved he now finds his destiny entwined with that of the streetwise but vulnerable and frightened teenager Jamal. For on the minidisc, lifted by an unwitting Jamal, lies a crucial, increasingly perilous link to Donovan’s past.

Unsettling and unpredictable, this taut, compelling page turner of a novel delivers point blank every unexpected narrative hit, twist, and turn as it leads Donovan finally to the terror of The Mercy Seat.

Martyn Waites is emerging as one of the leading writers of British noir fiction. The Mercy Seat is his first American release. He lives in Newcastle.

Bone Machine

‘Waites stands out in the field of young British noir writers…
with his bruised characters, raw edged dialogue, and extraordinary night vision.’ Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

The body is discovered in an abandoned burial ground: a young woman, blond, ritualistically mutilated, apparently. Her eyes and mouth have been crudely sewn shut.

The police come up with a suspect quick enough: the victim’s boyfriend, Michael Nell, who has a notoriously uncontrollable temper as well as an incriminating record of violence against women. His lawyer, however, is not convinced that Nell is a killer.

All Joe Donovan has to do is prove the truth of Michael Nell’s alibi. The job proves not to be routine, as Donovan’s inquiries lead him and his crack team of operatives deep into Newcastle’s murky underworld of child trafficking and prostitution. When the second body shows up, the former investigative journalist knows he’s up against more than local gangsters.

Still bearing the scars of his own crushing history since the disappearance of his six year old son three years before, Donovan now finds himself enmeshed in the dark biography of an elusive, deranged serial killer whom he can profile but cannot identify. The killer meanwhile obliges the authorities with maddeningly cryptic clues to his twisted, deadly intents, but all the while time for the next young, unsuspecting victim is fast running out.

White Riot

The third novel in the acclaimed Joe Donovan series by ‘Britain’s answer to Michael Connelly’ Ken Bruen. When the savagely beaten body of a Muslim student is discovered in a rundown area of Newcastle, blame falls on the far right National Unity Party but for once they appear to be innocent. In fact, with elections looming, they are poised to make significant gains. Not the best time for Trevor Whitman, ex 70s radical, to return to his native northeast. Haunted by his violent past, he’s receiving death threats over the murder of a policeman years ago.

Joe Donovan, the hero of Martyn Waites’ acclaimed trilogy of thrillers, is called in to investigate. After the death of a supposed suicide bomber, the investigation takes a more dangerous turn as Donovan and his team find themselves the targets of a ruthless killer unlike any they have faced before. A killer who will do anything to ensure an explosive thirty year old secret remains buried. Anything even orchestrating a brutal race war that will tear the city apart, with Donovan caught in the middle.

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Speak No Evil

In the new Joe Donovan thriller, Waites ravaged hero must help a woman determine if her recent visions are related to the death of a young boy. Anne Marie is back in the hometown she hasn’t seen for forty years, trying to live a normal life with her partner and teenage son. But that’s impossible for Anne Marie. Because forty years ago, when she was eleven, she killed a little boy. She is trying to make peace with her past by telling her story to journalist Joe Donovan. But it’s not that simple. Suffering from horrifying visions, she sometimes does bad things. Things she has no memory of afterward. So when a teenager on her housing estate is murdered and she wakes up with blood on her hands, Anne Marie naturally fears the worst. Her fragile life falling apart, Anne Marie turns to those she loves. But where she was expecting support, she finds only betrayal. Desperate, she turns to Donovan for help. But Donovan may have his own reasons for helping her.. reasons that have to do with the disappearance of his own son…
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Mary’s Prayer

‘London’s dark heart has seldom been exposed with such surgical precision. Brutal, mesmerizing stuff.’ Ian Rankin

‘Waites stands out in the crowded field of young British noir writers…
with his bruised characters, raw edged dialogue, and extraordinary night vision.’ Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
The Mercy Seat is a beautifully written and constructed thriller…
. Raw violence explodes on almost every page, and there are some artfully awful villains.’ Publishers Weekly starred review

Mary’s Prayer is an assured, powerful debut from a writer sure to find his place in modern crime fiction. Contemporary noir with a distinctly Chandleresque flavor. A significant contribution to the genre.’ Andrew Vachss

‘As John Harvey did for Nottingham and George Pelecanos does for Washington, Waites uses real places in a city he knows intimately to portray an underside even many residents wouldn’t recognize. Highly recommended for adult mystery collections.’ Library Journal starred review

Disillusioned with London, journalist Stephen Larkin reluctantly accepts an assignment to cover a gangland funeral in Newcastle. While there, an old flame asks him to investigate an alleged suicide, which pushes Larkin into circumstances that spin dangerously beyond his control.

From a powerful new voice in neo noir and available for the first time in the United States Pegasus Books is proud to present Martyn Waites’ debut crime novel.

Little Triggers

‘An ambitious, tautly plotted thriller that offers a stark antidote to P.D. James’ cozy world of middle class murder. A huge talent.’ Time Out

‘Martyn Waites’ lean, exhilarating prose is from the heart and from the guts, and that’s exactly where it hits you.’ Mark Billingham

‘Waites stands out in the crowded field of young British noir writers with his bruised characters, raw edged dialogue, and extraordinary night vision.’ Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

‘London’s dark heart has seldom been exposed with such surgical precision. Brutal, mesmerizing stuff.’ Ian Rankin

‘A powerful writer who creates memorable characters who live in the memory as well as on the page. The skillful dialogue reminds me of Ken Bruen.’ Otto Penzler, The New York Sun

‘A sometimes brutal, sometimes poetic journey through the dark heart of modern London, and confirms Waites as one of the brightest stars in British crime writing.’ John Connolly

In this stunning sequel to Mary’s Prayer, we find journalist Stephen Larkin back in his native Newcastle, whose dark underbelly is fertile territory for men who live beyond the reaches of morality. To fill the empty space in his life, Larkin jumps at the chance to track down a child abuser with friends in high places. He thinks he’s experienced all there is to know about the evil that men do. But nothing has prepared Larkin for the self styled Minister for Youth…

Martyn Waites, the author of six critically acclaimed crime novels, is emerging as one of the leading writers of British noir fiction. Little Triggers is the second novel in his Stephen Larkin trilogy. Waites lives in London.

Candleland

Karen Moir ran away from home in Edinburgh when she was just sixteen; all her father, Detective Inspector Henry Moir, knows is that she was headed for London. Following a trail of warring drug dealers, child prostitution and born again Christian gangsters, the search for Karen Moir becomes an increasingly dangerous trawl through London’s underworld. And it soon becomes clear that there are others who want Karen found the only difference being that they don t care whether she’s dead or alive.

The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story (By:Susan Hill)

What real reader does not yearn, somewhere in the recesses of his or her heart, for a really literate, first class thriller one that chills the body with foreboding of dark deeds to come, but warms the soul with perceptions and language at once astute and vivid? In other words, a ghost story by Jane Austen. Austen we cannot, alas, give you, but Susan Hill’s remarkable Woman In Black comes as close as the late twentieth century is likely to provide. Set on the obligatory English moor, on an isolated causeway, the story has as its hero one Arthur Kipps, an up and coming young solicitor who has come north to attend the funeral and settle the estate of Mrs. Alice Drablow of Eel Marsh House. The routine formalities he anticipates give way to a tumble of events and secrets more sinister and terrifying than any nightmare: the rocking chair in the nursery of the deserted Eel Marsh House, the eerie sound of pony and trap, a child’s scream in the fog, and, most dreadfully, and for Kipps most tragically, the woman in black. The Woman In Black is both a brilliant exercise in atmosphere and controlled horror and a delicious spine tingler proof positive that that neglected genre, the ghost story, isn’t dead after all.

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