The Mercy Chair

'Macabre and wry' Telegraph

'Mesmerising, macabre and magnificent. The Mercy Chair is truly terrifying, laugh-out-loud funny, and impossibly clever. Poe and Tilly are unstoppable' Chris Whitaker

'Washington Poe is a brilliant creation, from one of the finest and most inventive crime writers of today' Peter James

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Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin . . .

Washington Poe has a story to tell.

And he needs you to listen.

You'll hear how it started with the robber birds. Crows. Dozens of them. Enough for a murder . . .

He'll tell you about a man who was tied to a tree and stoned to death, a man who had tattooed himself with a code so obscure, even the gifted analyst Tilly Bradshaw struggled to break it. He'll tell you how the man's murder was connected to a tragedy that happened fifteen years earlier when a young girl massacred her entire family.

And finally, he'll tell you about the mercy chair. And why people would rather kill themselves than talk about it . . .

Poe hopes you've been paying attention. Because in this story, nothing is as it seems . . .

----

'Craven renders the darkness of the human condition with immense skill, ratcheting the tension to a nails-on-chalkboard pitch. Don't turn out the lights.' Vaseem Khan

MORE PRAISE FOR MW CRAVEN:

'The kind of novel that inspired me to write fiction in the first place. A guaranteed great time.' Chris Brookmyre

'Darkly entertaining' The Telegraph

'If you haven't read any M.W. Craven yet, fix that immediately' S. A. Cosby

'I've been following M.W. Craven's Poe/Tilly series from the very beginning, and it just gets better and better' Peter Robinson

'Poe and Tilly books are a joy' Steve Cavanagh

'In Tilly and Poe, M.W. Craven has created a stand-out duo who are two of the most compelling characters in crime fiction in recent years' Fiona Cummins

'Darkly comic . . . Thrilling' The Independent

'Clever, sophisticated, utterly gripping thriller from one of the best writers around' Mari Hannah

'Craven has unleashed Ben Koenig into the thriller world. Long may he raise...read more...