The Mercy Chair PB

"'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 ---- 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