Time of Death (Tom Thorne Novels)

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Ben Batt as DI Paul Hopkins, Helen's partner and fellow detective in the Greater Manchester Police. [5] Billingham is always spot on, but TIME OF DEATH is pitch-perfect, evenly balanced between plot and character. You won’t be able to read it without wondering why all books can’t be this good." This is more of a slow burn than the last instalment (which left me only slightly less traumatized than Tom & Phil). When Thorne's partner Helen goes home to support a childhood friend, he tags along. There's a serious criminal investigation underway involving the friend's husband & Tom has no jurisdiction. But every instinct tells him the local cops have the wrong guy & with nothing but time on his hands, he starts to nose around. Always heart stoppingly addictive, I read this fast - when it comes to Crime Fiction Mr Billingham really is at the top of his game, each novel bringing something a little different and for such a long running series it maintains a fresh new feel each time. Not that easy to pull off but seemingly effortless in this case. Discover one of the two masterful hit novels adapted for the massive new BBC One Drama series In The Dark, featuring brilliant heroine Helen Weeks.

a b Wollaston, Sam (12 July 2017). "In the Dark review: a thriller that's just the right side of formulaic". The Guardian. Unusually for a crime novel this book is as much about what happens to the family of a suspect when they are arrested as it is about the victims as well as the who, how and why element, and I really enjoyed it. Linda has two teenage children, trapped in an unfamiliar house while their own is combed by the scenes of crime officers, the tension between them all is palpable especially as they are being ‘looked after’ by the police and gawped at by the press camped outside the door. It takes a true story-teller to manage a disparate group of characters and maintain some of the most authentic dialogue I’ve read in quite some time.I do love crimes that are set in small communities, there is something very distinctive about the way they operate, with everyone knowing so much about each other’s lives, the suspicion of outsiders, the gossip and the protection and tolerance of their own, up to a point. That line is drawn when two girls go missing and Linda’s husband is taken in for questioning based upon some strong evidence and the race is on to find the missing girls.

Time of Death sees Thorne and Weeks setting off on a romantic break to the Cotswolds only for Weeks to see the partner of her best friend from school being arrested for the abduction of two teenage girls.Weeks wants to return to her childhood home to support her former best friend and drags Thorne along. Ever the policeman, Thorne feels something's amiss and makes a nuisance of himself with the investigation team. But they don't want help from the big metropolitan detective. For me, Mark Billingham is that author, and his newly published TIME OF DEATH may be that book. Billingham has seemed to be incapable of writing any way but wonderfully since SLEEPYHEAD, his first Tom Thorne novel published in 2002. While Billingham is well-known in his native England, his following in the United States is somewhat smaller, though certainly no less loyal. TIME OF DEATH is a quantum jump up from his other, excellent work, including the spellbinding THE BONES BENEATH, which was released in 2014 and should be the book that gains Billingham the recognition he deserves on this side of the ocean.Hogan, Michael (11 July 2017). "In the Dark is taut thriller with a credible cop-with-a-conscience heroine - review". The Telegraph. The mystery and thriller genres are full of authors who write remarkable novels, but find that commercial success commensurate with their talents and efforts proves to be elusive. They certainly do well enough, and have a diehard and loyal fan base, but they aren’t household names. Then, after several efforts, they write a book that everyone talks about, and the degree of success that they have deserved all along is suddenly theirs. When 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 and convinced of her husband's innocence.