Lifeless

Tom Thorne, Book 5

By: Mark Billingham

Narrated by: Robert Glenister

Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

Tom Thorne's career is on the skids. Depressed by the recent loss of his father, berated for overstepping the mark on his last case, he's been 'encouraged' to take leave. It's a fairly dire situation. But not as dire as the situation for London's homeless. Three vagrants have been found murdered in the last month. Were they just random jetsam, or were they targeted for a reason?

With his deputy, Dave Holland, as his only contact, Thorne is seconded to the streets. Not as a policeman, but as one of life's rejects. It fits: he looks the part, and feels it as well. In this twilight netherworld he finds a society with its own rules and its own moral code. And the word on these streets is that the killer is a cop.

©2005 Mark Billingham (P)2005 Time Warner AudioBooks

Far from Lifeless

One measure of really good whodunit is that you should "get it" a satisfying time before it is all spelt out for you. This one really worked for me. It is an engrossing book which got me intrigued from the very first. The main character is suitably flawed but sympathetic in the Bosch/Rebus tradition and the audio book has great atmosphere with music and sounds that add, for once, not distract. The feature I liked the best was the tough but compassionate treatment of the London homeless that is at the core of the book; it treads the tightrope between bleeding heart and bleeding heartless very successfully.
Essentially it's a great, if quite dark, mystery book with a strong plot and well developed characters who really make you care about what is going to happen to them. I don't often take abridgments but at 6 hours this leaves a very full meal of a book which is well worth the credit.