THE MERCY CHAIR PB – M. W. CRAVEN

"Winner of the Fingerprint Award 2025 for Crime book Shortlisted for Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel 2025 —- 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 . . . —- MORE PRAISE FOR MW CRAVEN: 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 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