May 16, 2011
In Billingham's thrilling eighth crime novel featuring London police detective Tom Thorne (after Death Message), Thorne welcomes the distraction of a new case after his girlfriend, Det. Insp. Louise Porter, suffers a miscarriage. When Emily Walker is found beaten and suffocated with a plastic bag in her Finchley home, she appears to be the victim of a domestic disputeâuntil Thorne learns that a 23-year-old nurse was similarly beaten and suffocated three weeks earlier in Leicester City. Thorne and his team discover that both women's mothers were murdered 15 years earlier by psychopath Raymond Garvey, who killed seven women in four months and later died in prison of a brain tumor. As the body count rises, it's obvious a copycat killer is now targeting the children of Garvey's victims. Thorne's private struggles to process the loss of his unborn child and snippets from the lives of the present-day killer's victims lend poignancy. Billingham continues to captivate with equal parts suspense, deduction, and heart.
June 1, 2011
DI Tom Thorne volunteers for a case that turns out to be the work of yet another serial killer as inventive as he is depraved.
Suffocating a victim to death after conking her senseless with a blunt instrument isn't by any means a common modus operandi, and it's not long before DS Paul Brewer links the London murder of Emily Walker to the very similar death of Catherine Burke in Leicester three weeks earlier. A third and fourth killing make it clear that the case is open-ended. It's even more startling and disturbing, however, to see what the victims have in common: They're all children of murder victims, the seven people who were killed 15 years ago by Raymond Garvey. Garvey, who died in prison, is safely out of the picture, but someone calling himself Anthony Garvey and identifying himself as the monster's son shows every sign of carrying on the family business. Thorne takes on the assignment at least partly to insulate himself from the news that his own child with DI Louise Porter is never going to be born. But his own traumatic burden keeps Thorne, never a paragon at the brightest of times (Death Message, 2009, etc.), from doing his best work, and the killer not only continues to elude the Metropolitan Police despite leaving pounds of forensic evidence at the crime scenes but pulls a major con by manipulating the Met into flushing out the last few victims on his list.
Middling detective work, a compelling villain and the author's usual sensitivity to men and women pushed to the edge by their compulsions, their work or their families.
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February 15, 2011
On his eighth outing, Det. Tom Thorne wants an easy case--his girlfriend would like to see him sometimes. But the routine murder he takes on turns out to be anything but, as a single detail--a bloodstained X-ray gripped by the victim--starts presenting itself at other crime scenes as well. Having switched U.S. publishers, award-winning British author Billingham has a chance to break out here. Watch.
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
May 1, 2011
A woman is bludgeoned to death in her London home. It appears to an ordinary murder, except for the small bit of X-ray film clutched in her hand. Inspector Tom Thorne gets the case, and additional victims turn up, all clutching a similar piece of film. The pieces prove to be from a cranial X-ray of the infamous Raymond Garvey, who killed seven women 15 years before. Thorne learns that each victim is the child of one of Garveys victims, and each murder proves that the killer is diabolically clever. Plot twists and red herrings abound in this ninth Thorne novel (following Death Message, 2009), but readers new to the series may wonder if the moody, taciturn inspector is coming apart at the emotional seams. His lovers miscarriage has hit him hard, and his normal frustrations with police bureaucracy and politics seem ready to boil over. Thorne withdraws into himself, and that diminishes the role of some of Billinghams other ongoing, also engaging characters. It all adds up to a somewhat murky new addition to a successful series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)