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Longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award 2025, M.W. Craven, joins Harrogate International Festivals and host Joe Haddow, to talk about his book, The Mercy Chair.
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…
About the Author
Multi-award-winning author M.W. Craven was born in Carlisle but grew up in Newcastle. He joined the army at sixteen, leaving ten years later to complete a social work degree. Seventeen years after taking up a probation officer role in Cumbria, at the rank of assistant chief officer, he became a full-time author.
He is an instant Sunday Times bestseller and, for his Cumbria-set Washington Poe series, a recipient of the 2019 Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger, the 2022 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2023. The series has now been translated into twenty-seven languages.
