Bone Machine by Martyn Waites

[Ray]

From Reviewing the Evidence.com:

"Martyn Waites's BONE MACHINE is set in Newcastle and isn't what you'd call a bundle of laughs. Amidst the grim urban setting, there's a serial killer on the loose and a particularly unpleasant Eastern European people trafficker, who is living off the proceeds of prostitution.

You know you're in for a rocky ride when the serial killer's first victim is found in a disused burial ground with her eyes and mouth sewn shut. She also has a sleazy and charmless boyfriend whom the police favour as the murderer.

The lad's solicitor hires Joe Donovan to prove he didn't do it. Joe and his mis-matched team, who go under the name Albion, aren't private investigators, you understand – they're information brokers. But they seem to spend BONE MACHINE doing a heck of a lot of digging as their bid to clear Michael Nell's name runs alongside their other job of trying to reunite a kidnapped Eastern European woman with her brother.

BONE MACHINE is a busy book, with threads involving the police, Joe and his team, 'The Historian', and Katya and the human trafficking. But Waites is an adept writer who keeps the plotlines under firm control. My preference would have been to have lost the police procedural element and given us more time with Albion, but it does allow Peta, one of Joe's team, to examine her decision to leave the police and start a university degree.

Joe's team are by far the most interesting characters, all of them damaged in some way. He's a former investigate journalist whose aim in life is to find out what happened to his young son, who went missing. 

The set-up reminded me a little of John Baker's York PI series, although BONE MACHINE is more gruesome and less quirky than the Sam Turner books.

BONE MACHINE is the second in the series after MERCY SEAT, and it's a strong page-turner. Waites plots well, creates a grim urban setting, and introduces us to some particularly unpleasant villains (there was a crafty twist there that I didn't spot). I'll even forgive him an immensely annoying cliff-hanger for the next book!"

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, January 2007

     This story will not appeal to everyone, but I will be reading his first and next novels in this series.