Customer Reviews

The Mercy Seat

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As a non-stop hard hitting, realistic, and action packed thriller set in present day England, this is probably hard to beat. A really burnt out, even suicidal, ex-newsman becomes involved with about every crooked low life type that one may imagine, from bad cops to child molesters, and sadistic killers. Great descriptions of England's seamy urban side, and a really motley assortment of personages, mostly bad, make this a solid US debut! Thankfully, most of the gruesomeness and perversions are not described in detail, another feather in the cap of the author. Only four stars because, some of the characters and situations become almost cartoon-like, and an editor could have cut down on some repetitive phrases like "He Smiled", which are way over-done.

Martyn Waites' The Mercy Seat is a thrillingly ugly portrayal of a big city's underbelly--full of crime, abandoned children, thugs, lawyers, etc. A 14-year-old rent boy steals a mini-disc player; and when he listens to the mini-disc that happened to be inside the player, he realizes he's stumbled onto something very important. Some people are dying over the contents of this disc, and some good guys are trying to figure out the who, what, and why of the crimes described on the disc.

Yes, some of the characters are a bit formulaic. Yes, there's a lot of sick violence. But it really lends verisimilitude to the bleak landscape Waites want us to believe is real. I was convinced!

The story is a little too long; but the author has put enough thought into the subplots and supporting characters so that they do not sink the story. They may weigh it down a bit, but you won't be sorry you picked up this scary and sometimes horrifying thriller. I will definitely read any other of Martyn Waites' novels I can get my hands on.

This was my first book by Martyn Waites. It's part of the popular Joe Donavan series and the book starts by coaxing Joe out of retirement. From the first few pages the book picks you up, throws you into the seat, and tells you to stay there. The book takes you on an intercity rollercoaster journey between Newcastle (incidently my home town)and London and introduces characters so believable that I'm convinced I've met a few of them. The story is first class and keeps you hanging on until you find out what happened to our hero's kidnapped son. (No I'm not gonna spoil it for you.)

But hey, Martyn! Newcastle aint that bad!

Noir is supposed to be "crime fiction featuring hard-boiled cynical characters and bleak sleazy settings". Neo-noir is defined as " the modern trend of incorporating aspects of film noir into films of other genres," with the note that "the term can be applied to other works of fiction that incorporate these elements".

The dustjacket proclaims Martyn Waites as "one of the major talents in neo-noir." I'd argue both the designation as a major talent and that his work is neo-noir. At page 174 of this 421 page yawner, I asked myself why I continued to read it. It is dull, cliched and becomes increasingly predictable.

Author Waites obviously believes that if he makes his characters hardboiled and cynical and sets them in sleazy surroundings, all will be well. Forgotten in this formulation is that the characters have to be interesting and, ideally, believable and the plot has to be capable of involving the reader.

Waites fails on both counts here and more.

The book opens with the torture of Tosher in a dark, dirt-streaked warehouse. Three men are torturing Tosher, one of them having a "muscle-pumped, steroid-assisted" body. He likes driving nails through limbs using his fist as a hammer. Oh my. Then Tosher is lost to us for 300 or so pages.

Everything in "The Mercy Seat" is formulaic. Each character has a tortured past that they can barely cope with. Joe Donovan, once a crack investigative reporter, is a broken man a few years after his six year old son was kidnapped and he lapsed into semi-alcoholism, his marriage and career consigned to the ash heap of history. Maria Bennett, his old editor, calls him back into harness to follow a story that she feels only Donovan can do. Jamal, a 14 year old male prostitute of mixed race, is a drug user and has a background that would make a social worker weep. One after another in an incredibly boring parade, Waites introduces us to his characters. Father Jack, a crook who claims to run a settlement house of some kind is actually a pimp and sexual molester. You could have predicted he would be described as enormously fat as well. Jeta Knight, a former police officer, now runs a private detective agency. Of course, because she is a woman and her partner an Asian homosexual male, their business is failing so they, on their own initiative, stake out Father Jack's brothel (which is, of course, protected by police and politicians) because the fame of their expose will make their security firm rich and famous. Huh?

Waites' cast of characters is lengthy, seemingly a rival to that of "War & Peace." Every one of them has enough problems to keep a Freudian therapist happy for decades. And not a one of them is actually interesting, much less believable.

All this is set in Newcastle, England . . . or at least in the sleazier parts of Newcastle. Guess that makes it noir. Lots of rain. Lots of dark shadows.

The story has Jamal stealing a mini-disc that contains a conversation between a reporter (who shows up dead) and a missing scientist. Donovan, his editor and the newspaper's lawyer try to get the mini-disc from Jamal. Father Jack has other plans. Jeta and Amar join the team. Blood and violence ensue. A corrupt cop has big plans. So does a saintly ex-convict, wrongly convicted of murder, and now compromised by the corrupt cop. And the sadist who likes to hammer nails with his fists is always running around hurting people, when he doesn't simply murder them.

Overall, there's really nothing interesting here. Not the characters. Not the plot. Sure the make-believe people who populate this novel are cynical and hard-boiled. But in a cliched way. The plot is like an all-stop commuter train: you'll know you'll get to the end of the line . . . eventually. It just seems like forever.

Martyn Waites should have shown mercy to the reader in "The Mercy Seat" by creating interesting characters and a believable plot. He didn't, so you can show mercy to yourself and not bother with this.

Jerry

" The Mercy Seat" is a marvelous beginning of a new series featuring Joe Donovan, former investigating reporter. Being an ardent lover of British neo-noir, I just drowned myself in this facinating book. Mr. Waites writing is brilliant, characters fresh and real, and the suspense tangable. This crew of troubled fighters grabs the reader, and this powerful, violent book is impossible to put down. The city of Newcastle, rarely seen in British mysteries, seems as real as it can be. The modern and the old, the arty and the gritty stand side by side and occasionaly gnaw at each other. Luckily, I have the next three books in this series to relish and savor, hoping for much more to come.

First Line: Tosher opened his eyes.

Two years ago, Joe Donovan was a respected investigative journalist in Newcastle and destined for great things. Now he's on the fast track to total obscurity, completely demoralized by the still-unsolved kidnapping of his young son. The case of a missing research scientist has people tracking Donovan down in his remote Northumberland lair, promising him access to any and all information in his son's case if he'll focus his talents on finding the scientist. Donovan takes the bait, little knowing that he'll soon meet a young rent boy who stole the wrong disc player, a couple of private investigators trying to keep their business afloat, a loathsome pedophile, and a vicious psychopath known as Hammer.

Waites has a talent for characterization, but nothing really started clicking for me until I'd read three-quarters of the book. The weight of the plot and sub-plots almost sank the ship.

Newcastle tends to get short shrift in crime fiction, so I did appreciate the book being set in that northern city. Violence, torture, pedophilia all play a part in the action, but none are so graphic that they tripped my gruesome meter. After reading The Mercy Seat, I would have to say that I'd like to see if the next book in the series streamlined the plot in order for those very interesting characters to be able to strut their stuff.

Just ignore that Jerry Guy's review he is a nob

The Mercy Seat is the best Thriller Debut this year

John Wiffler

Even as a (now former) reader of Martyn Waites' Joe Donovan stories, I'm forced to give this lame effort a single star. I can only think Mr Waites is padding his superannuation policy by churning out this plotless, contrived, clueless, confused mess.

I firstly have to admit to one thing though: I only managed to stay awake for the first 100 pages or so! Across those lacklustre pages I've not seen so many disparate characters introduced, all with virtually no back story or filling out, and who seemingly were totally disconnected to the slender thread of the plot. For example, surely after 100 pages we should've learned exactly who "Tosher" was. What exactly was 'Father' Jack all about and what relevance did he hold for the overall plot considering his prominence. Why was the character "Hammer" so gruesomely painted, only thereafter to virtually vanish into the background? Wasn't his sapphire tooth a bit contrived? And just who was the protagonist of this story? I had assumed it would be Joe Donovan, but it seemed more like the 15-year-old half-man half-boy Jamal (well, as far as I read anyway).

Who were the two people watching Father Jack's house, and why? And why was the male of the pair an Asian(!) homosexual; was that germane to the plot? Again, at around the 90-page mark, an obviously corrupt high-ranking police officer is thrown into this literary stew, doing a drugs deal with yet ANOTHER ill-drawn and un-introduced character.

I certainly need to know a lot more about the characters and to have them far more fleshed out a quarter of the way through the story. I found I couldn't feel any empathy for any of them; they all seemed like losers or morally bankrupt, or worse, just along for their inconsequential ride. There wasn't one single character I could align my feelings with.

And some of the cliches... oh dear. "Excuse me?" said the receptionist, eyes saucer-wide.

How about something just a little bit more evocative Mr Waites; this sort of thing is simply lazy writing.

So, a very disappointing book (or, in my case, a quarter-book). Don't waste your time folks.