Mark Billingham's Detective Inspector Tom Thorne has, over the past decade and a half, become one of the most intriguing and reliable characters in modern British crime fiction. Demoted after the dramatic end of his last case (
Good as Dead), Thorne is back on the streets of London for the first time in 20 years - and he's not taking the reversal in his fortunes stoically. This makes life tough for his new romantic partner, Helen Weeks, but it also drives him to investigate a series of deaths - all by apparent suicide. Billingham shuffles his narrative deck with skill - between Thorne's tense home life, his sense of growing older and his relationship with trusty sidekick Phil Hendricks, and the gradual excavation of a case that hardly anyone wants him to investigate. Billingham has swapped the violent fireworks of his early books for quieter but no less powerful explorations of life in modern Britain. The finale on top of a London skyscraper provides an almost literal cliff-hanger - and sets up the next instalment perfectly.
Extras: a profile of Mark Billingham.
