Bone Machine (Joe Donovan Series #2)

The body of a young woman is discovered in an abandoned burial ground. Her body has been ritualistically mutilated, her eyes and mouth crudely sewn shut. The victim’s boyfriend, Michael Nell, seems to be the obvious suspect. However, several things do not add up and Joe Donovan is put on the case to prove Nell’s alibi. The job is far from routine, as Donovan’s inquiries lead him deep into Newcastle’s underworld of child-trafficking and prostitution. Still bearing the scars of his own son’s disappearance three years before, Donovan finds himself enmeshed in the dark biography of an elusive serial killer whom he can profile but not identify. As the killer continues to taunt the authorities with cryptic clues, a second body appears, and time is running out for the next victim.

The body of a young woman is discovered in an abandoned burial ground. Her body has been ritualistically mutilated, her eyes and mouth crudely sewn shut. The victim’s boyfriend, Michael Nell, seems to be the obvious suspect. However, several things do not add up and Joe Donovan is put on the case to prove Nell’s alibi. The job is far from routine, as Donovan’s inquiries lead him deep into Newcastle’s underworld of child-trafficking and prostitution. Still bearing the scars of his own son’s disappearance three years before, Donovan finds himself enmeshed in the dark biography of an elusive serial killer whom he can profile but not identify. As the killer continues to taunt the authorities with cryptic clues, a second body appears, and time is running out for the next victim.

Publishers Weekly

Characters struggle, sometimes heroically, against their compulsions and addictions in Waites's messy sequel to The Mercy Seat(2006). Journalist Joe Donovan's life fell apart after his six-year-old son vanished years ago, but now he's put together a substitute family of soiled misfits who want to learn how to trust and depend on each other while saving vulnerable people from exploitation. Besides going after a Serbian war criminal who's reinvented himself as a British vice lord, Donovan and his team become involved in the hunt for a sadistic serial killer who preys on young women. Along the way, they explore Newcastle's slums, where eastern European girls are a disposable commodity. What many of Waites's characters really want is proof that they're more than animals, mere "bone machines." Even the lunatic who tortures girls to death is trying to prove that the voices in his head are real and that there islife beyond death. Watching these competing, terribly driven people is often unpleasant but also compelling, as readers are kept unsure whether the ones they care about can survive as human beings or not. (Mar.)

Martyn Waites is one of crime fiction's leading writers of neo-noir. He is the author of The Mercy Seat, Bone Machine, White Riot, and Speak No Evil. Waites lives in London.