Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Gritty and gruesome it's a dark tale of injustice and vengeance, and the lengths a father will go to for his daughter.
Will written, intense and emotional, Mercy is a heck of a ride.

Matt Deal has experienced the worst side of life, his daughter Mercy was gangraped and left in such a bad state she will never live a normal life. The police investigation is tainted, loss of evidence meant the people were never prosecuted. In his despair he returns home to the U.K and starts a new life as a detective. When his new life turns sour and he finds himself dodging the law in thw U.K , Matt turns to his friend Wolfie, who using her special skills, arranges his return to America where he finally discovers the truth about the night of his daughter's rape, and this sets him on his own course of revenge.
I found Mercy very intense and a past paced story. Matt just never gets on the right side and I found I was just so hoping he would find peace...and a little love with Wolfie!

I know the setting for this book was in the future, but I found some of the scenes too far fetched to be believable, thus becoming distracting for me.

Mercy
By Stephen Bentley

3 stars.

The first in a series featuring private detective Matt Deal and Wolfie Jules.

This is an easy to read style of futuristic mystery action fiction. Set across England and the USA, the story flows slowly as the characters are introduced and developed.

When Matt’s daughter is sexually assaulted and left in a coma, Matt leaves justice to the local authorities and flees to England. On his return he commences hunting down those who escaped justice with the help of his live-in girlfriend Wolfie.

While the story takes a while to get going, it does get there in the end.

This title has been reviewed by www.books-reviewed.weebly.com

This title was provided by Netgalley and the publisher in return for an open and honest review.

#Mercyt #NetGalley

Wow, this was an exciting, full-of-action story, but I feel that I should issue a warning about the language. If you are offended by the very frequent use of the "F word", for instance, you might want to skip it.

I am not in the habit of giving bad reviews but this book desperately needs help. The description hooks you, but the first few chapters it is so disjointed and it is difficult to like the characters. Everything happens too quickly. The date shifts too quickly. It would have been so much nicer to have just been a memory recall of events and then pop back into present day, minus the placement of the years. Then maybe you could get to know the guy before he blasts off 5 years into the future. The characters don't have time to develop and conversations are stilted. I hope someone will help him rewrite this book as it had potential of being a decent read.
I received this book as a complimentary copy for an unbiased review.The opinions expressed are my own. Maybe it's been edited and rewritten by publication time.

This book caught my eye as the description mentioned it would cater to Lee Child’s Jack Reacher fans (I am one), and the summary made me think of Deathwish (movies I have a soft spot for).

In a near post-Brexit future, Matt Deal is the owner of a Muay Thai boxing studio and gym. His marriage is on the rocks due to the alcoholism of his wife, and his life gets upended the day his 15 years old daughter is assaulted and raped, left comatose. Her aggressors get released on a technicality, and Deal, now divorced, moves back to what’s left of the UK to join the police force.

The book is fast paced and the action is well written. Unfortunately, those are, to me, its only qualities.

The first part of the book reads more like a novel from Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir’s The Destroyer series, minus the satire and cynicism of Remo Williams’ adventures. The writing is pumped full of testosterone, which makes it even more surprising when Matt Deal, for example, suddenly gets tear-eyed, out of character.

While the detective roams the UK, the book isn’t helped by the sheer number (I stopped counting) of gratuitous and often unexpected sex scenes which do nothing to advance the plot, nor to flesh out the characters.

The characters reactions, actions and dialogue often make little sense. At some points, the maiming or death of relatives seem to have little impact. Asocial characters suddenly become trusty of near strangers. At least one plot point is introduced, and then abandoned. All pretense of sound police work is forgotten to favor actions scenes leaving a trail of bodies (but the main character worries about Internal Affairs investigations in clear cut self defense cases). All this feels pretty incoherent.

The second part of the book gets to the revenge arc for Matt Deal against those who wronged him and his daughter. I was hoping the book would redeem itself at this point. However, it is also quite lacking in this aspect. No one man army, here. A final explosive confrontation is indeed set up, but the payoff isn’t there, mainly because of the use of a Deus Ex Machina in the form of an improbable coincidence.

The book ends without epilogue, on a cliffhanger I didn’t care much for, as the author didn’t manage to build characters I would really care about. Matt Deal is no Jack Reacher.

Thanks to Hendry Publishing, BooksGoSocial, and Netgalley for the review copy of this book in exchange for this unbiased review. I really wanted to like it.

Mercy is based on the life of Matt Deal. He's stuck in a very unhappy marriage to Lorey, the daughter of a rich real estate magnate, Jack Hughes. His daughter, Mercy, is the only light in his dark life. However, one night, Mercy is brutally raped and left for dead. He is already having trouble dealing with that when he finds out the assailants may be freed because the evidence linking them to the crime has mysteriously disappeared. His father-in-law threatens to make his disappear, blaming him for Mercy's assault. He returns to his homeland of Britain, now reeling from the aftereffects of Brexit. But even there, Matt is determined to bring his daughter's attackers to justice.

The writing in this story was poor. The plot had great promise but because of the writing, I could not get into it at all. The dialogue was stilted and forced, which gave the entire story an unnatural feel.

The women in this story were unbelievable and made to look like bimbos. I don't know how it works but I am pretty sure a porn star should not be grabbing a detective's crotch while being interrogated.

I was not impressed with this book at all. If written better, the plot would have done quite well.

Violence: Quite a few violent scenes. The sexual assault was quite brutal and this will most likely be a trigger.
Sexual Content: Besides the sexual assault, there were a lot of sex scenes with very graphic descriptions.
Profanity: Many instances
Religious Themes: None
Alcohol/Drugs/Smoking: All of the above with some underage drinking as well.

The beginning is too tough to get through, so it starts off on negative foot. This was hard to follow, and sometimes I was confused by who was doing what.

I wanted to like the character of Matt Deal, but he seemed a bit artificial.
Overall, the idea had promise, but the writing was a bit uncomfortable.

One of the worst cases of badly written stupidity I have ever seen. The language is stilted and unnatural, and there's so much nonsense I couldn't finish the book. A waste of time.