Time of Death (Tom Thorne Novels)

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The main narrative though concentrates largely on Helen and her relationship with her old friend Linda Bates- it shows how the lives of innocent people, namely Linda and her two children are torn apart when her husband, the children's stepfather is arrested initially for abduction and then charged on counts of both murder and abduction. Synopsis - Tom Thorne is on holiday with his girlfriend DS Helen Weeks, when two girls are abducted in Helen’s home town.

But their peace is shattered when they learn that two girls have been abducted in the Warwickshire village of Polesford and a local man has been arrested, refusing to reveal their whereabouts. In fact, early on in the book Billingham has a sly dig at the cliché of the angst-ridden drunken maverick of current crime fiction. There is still an extremely clever and killer on the loose and a missing girl who Thorne believes might still be alive. There are no quick solutions here but a story that unfolds like the petals of a rose revealing a nasty underbelly and one shocking revelation concerning one of the players with a personal secret to unfold. The first is the ridiculous amount of unnecessary bad language, which is constant all the way through.

There are strong hints of a recent case that caused Tom Thorne (and Hendricks) enormous grief and it is clear that this ‘holiday’ is overdue and much needed.

However the book is still full of the usual world weary cynicism and sarcasm that we have come to know and love and Thorne and Hendricks make a great double act. His standalone thriller IN THE DARK was chosen as one of the twelve best books of the year by the Times and his debut novel, SLEEPYHEAD was chosen by the Sunday Times as one of the 100 books that had shaped the decade.I liked what I discovered of his character and I particularly liked his relationship with Helen, the delicate dance that both perform as they try to do their best for others and themselves, and with Hendricks. It's interesting to see the story from the perspective of the family of the accused, although they're all so unlikeable I couldn't develop much sympathy for them.

There were enough clues to point me in the direction I took only to have the rug pulled out from beneath my feet towards the novels end. This was a great crime novel and, for the first time and possibly due to slightly fewer characters than normal, I guessed the killer on their very first entrance, refusing to be swayed by the red herrings later left along the path. The holiday is short lived when Helen hears the news involving an old school friend whose husband has been arrested in connection with 2 missing school girls. Time of Death is the first Mark Billingham novel I’ve read but it’s a story that works well on its own.Sleepyhead and Scaredy Cat were made into a hit TV series on Sky 1 starring David Morrissey as Thorne, and a new series based on the novels In the Dark and Time of Death will be broadcast on BBC1 in 2017. Thorne and his partner police officer Helen Weeks are on a trip to the small Warwickshire town of Polesford where an old school friend of Helen's is in trouble and in great need of comfort and assurance, her partner Stephen Bates having been arrested and accused of murder. You are sitting at the next table to Hendricks and Thorne overhearing them discuss bugs and death and missing girls. Performing alongside Val McDermid, Chris Brookmyre, Stuart Neville, Doug Johnstone and Luca Veste, this band of frustrated rockers murders songs for fun at literary festivals worldwide.

As ever a pleasure to spend time in Thorne's company - the whole series definitely comes highly recommended from me. I used to love him when I read Sleepyhead back when it was first released and the followings stories of DI Thorne but for some reason I haven't read any recently until Time of Death. Perhaps this far into a series Mark Billingham is keen not to just repeat the same London-based police procedural themes which earlier books have had, and perhaps he knows many of his readers have invested in his characters.I read a couple of his early books a good while ago – ‘Sleepyhead’ and one other – but something about ‘Good as Dead’ put me off. When it's splashed all over the press that family man Stephen Bates has been arrested, Helen and her partner Tom Thorne head to the flooded town to support Bates' wife - an old school friend of Helen's - who is living under siege with two teenage children and convinced of her husband's innocence. Helen spends a lot of time with Linda helping to support her as the suspect’s wife and I quite liked this angle, which is not one that we often come across in this type of read. If every fictional police officer must be a violent criminal, the least authors could do is try to make it believable. I had been knocking stars off my review in my head before it even landed on my doormat on publication day.