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A review by fieldri1968
From The Dead by Mark Billingham
5.0
If you are a fan of Billingham's Tom Thorne books then this is another high quality entry in the series. I strongly feel that Billingham has improved as a writer over the course of these books, especially how well he writes the parts of the story where lots happens at once (this was something I felt was sometimes not well managed in the first Thorne book 'Sleepyhead').
The story opens with a violent gangland death, a man handcuffed to the steering wheel of a Jaguar car which is then doused in petrol and torched.
Ten years later Thorne is required to re-examine these events. Soon the body count begins to climb, and both the guilty and the innocent will be in danger.
The crime story is well told, but the personal life of Thorne and his girlfriend has become more perfunctory. I think this helps the story as a whole because, while readers want to know that their protagonists are people with internal lives, the crime and the associated punishment is really what matters. For me, at least.
The story opens with a violent gangland death, a man handcuffed to the steering wheel of a Jaguar car which is then doused in petrol and torched.
Ten years later Thorne is required to re-examine these events. Soon the body count begins to climb, and both the guilty and the innocent will be in danger.
The crime story is well told, but the personal life of Thorne and his girlfriend has become more perfunctory. I think this helps the story as a whole because, while readers want to know that their protagonists are people with internal lives, the crime and the associated punishment is really what matters. For me, at least.