The Mercy Chair

A dark and twisted crime novel, this is the eagerly anticipated follow up to The Botanist. 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 . . .