The Burning Girl (Tom Thorne Novels) - Softcover

Billingham, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0751548960 ISBN 13: 9780751548969

Publisher: Sphere, 2012

Synopsis

A MAN WHO KILLS FOR MONEY
X marks the spot - and when that spot is a corpse's naked back and the X is carved in blood, DI Tom Thorne is in no doubt that the dead man is the latest victim of a particularly vicious killer.
A BRUTAL VENDETTA
This is brutal turf warfare between north London gangs. Organised crime boss Billy Ryan is moving into someone else's patch, and that someone is not best pleased.
A COP WHO IS PLAYING WITH FIRE
And when an X is carved on DI Tom Thorne's front door, he knows the smouldering embers of this case are about to erupt into flames...

About this title

Review

A contract killer is carving his way through North London's criminal underworld, leaving a bloody X on his victims' backs and taking Billy Ryan's gang down one thug at a time. Detective Inspector Tom Thorne and his team know there's a turf war going on, but who's attempting to take over Ryan's racket isn't quite clear. When DCI Carol Chamberlin comes out of retirement to work on the cold case squad and asks Thorne for help solving an old murder, the past and present catch up in what looks like a continuation of a twenty-year-old gang war. And when someone carves an X in Thorne's door, a fuse is lit that stretches from the eponymous burning girl of the title--Chamberlin's old case--to the gang war that's lighting up the London sky. It's a clunky plot that relies on telling more than showing, slowing down the pace and makeing it difficult for the reader to care about any of the principals involved--either the victims or those who seek justic for them. Billingham has written better thrillers (Lazybones, Scaredy Cat), but this one doesn't live up to their promises. --Jane Adams

About the Author

Mark Billingham has twice won the Theakston's Old Peculier Award for Crime Novel of the Year, and has also won a Sherlock Award for the Best Detective created by a British writer. Each of the novels featuring Detective Inspector Tom Thorne has been aSunday Timesbestseller.SleepyheadandScaredy Catwere made into a hit TV series on Sky 1 starring David Morrissey as Thorne, and a series based on the novelsIn the DarkandTime of Deathwas broadcast on BBC1. Mark lives in north London with his wife and two children.

Edition details

• Publisher: Sphere
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0751548960
• ISBN 13: 9780751548969
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 464