Born Under Punches: A Football Hooligan Punchtacular (Martyn Waites)

Born Under Punches

Martyn Waites

4/5 Stars

When someone tells me I am missing out on an author I usually check out their bibliography and if they have 8 or 10 books and have really no following and poor/average Amazon ratings it is a good indication that I should just stay away.  Music and writing are both arts forms, but I think it is far easier to be a misunderstood or undiscovered musician then it is an author.  Music is so diverse and complex.  While writing is simple, you string words together to form stories and some people and make beauty in their literary symphonies.  Now this is not to say people don’t have opposing tastes in reading, science fiction may not be a subject you care about, but H.G. Wells is still a great writer whether you care about alien invaders or not.  Good writing is good writing, its about the stories we enjoy.

As I digress, if I haven’t heard of a writer and they have a fairly respectable size catalog or their books have low ratings, it is likely the masses are right, the author is probably not very good.

Martyn Waites is an exception to that rule.  Not because he has bad ratings or that he is misunderstood, but because he is British.  As Jerry Seinfeld would say, “Not that there is anything wrong with that.”  But here is a fact, British music across all genres invaded the U.S., authors, not so

Book Review: Bone Machine, by Martyn Waites

While a book first published in 2007 does not seem like a common choice for a book review I challenge you to name one book by Martyn Waites.  Stop Googling.  If you named one you are likely from England, if not, you are like everyone else who is missing out.

Bone Machine is one-part To Catch a Serial Killer and one-part Public Service.  The Historian captures his prey, young attractive women, who he ritualistically rapes and tortures, but not before he sews their eyes and mouth shut.  His motives are left unknown for 450-pages, but once the dots are connected it is a rather dark dive into psychosis.  His victims of course lead the police, who like most novels are portrayed as bumbling alcoholics and only have sights set on an arrest, not stopping a killer.

Newcastle private investigator Joe Donovan leads a gang of misfits on a case that leads them straight into the heart of the murder investigation.  Donovan is the central character to Waites P.I. series, similar to America’s Alex Cross series in many ways.

While I compare him to Patterson because of the overall type of crime portrayed in his story, Waites is clearly unique as a noir writer and seen as anything but a rip off.