Time of Death (Tom Thorne Novels)

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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 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.

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. 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. Ever the policeman, Thorne feels something's amiss and makes a nuisance of himself with the investigation team. Tom Thorne is on holiday with his girlfriend DS Helen Weeks, when two girls are abducted in Helen’s home town.Good story line, probably helped in my head by the familiarity of most of the locations and experience of what they are like when they flood. This entry was posted in Crime, Review and tagged Crime on October 14, 2015 by Kate (For Winter Nights). But I don't want to spend all my time reading mysteries so I am always reluctant to try new ones and I am especially reluctant to jump into the middle of a mystery series, but in this case I had an opportunity to get a free-be from Netgalley so I took a chance based on the description of the story. But this one was great with lots of simultaneous stories to attract your attention from the mystery.

However, I doubt that anyone new to Billingham would manage that as they probably wouldn't know where to look for clues. As suggested above there are secrets to be revealed and a relationship tested to the extreme in a great example of modern British crime fiction. Instead of going on the hoped for vacation, Tom Thorne ends up accompanying his partner Helen Weeks to Polesford, the small town she grew up in, after she learns that two schoolgirls have been abducted in the area and Helen's old school friend's husband is the prime suspect. As ever a pleasure to spend time in Thorne's company - the whole series definitely comes highly recommended from me.This is the 13th book in Mark Billingham's series featuring his tough as old boots detective, Tom Thorne - I've not read the entire series but after really enjoying the previous book in the series, The Bones Beneath (review HERE) I felt the immediate need for more Thorne and so I started on Time of Death. While he has no authority or connection to the case he begins to question the way the investigation is going and starts to pursue avenues of his own.

Total waste, and a bit suspect with the bitter wife imagining wayward husband having back seat sex in a Mini with a 15 year old. The investigation into the abduction of the missing girls is a fascinating story which contains its fair share of surprises, made all the more shocking by the fact that we witness events through the eyes of outsiders Thorne and Weeks. It is always a joy to see a 'new' Tom Thorne on the bookshelves and as ever this lived up to expectations. While the story and denouement were worth the read, it was this ensemble of characters that kept me reading. This was different to the standard Thorne books as for the first part, he is little more than a bystander, supporting Helen who has a much bigger part to play in this book.I'm starting to forget what the murder team looks like and I don't particularly like Helen Weeks, Tom's latest girlfriend/colleague,. is almost satisfying, the original case of the missing girls is cleared up but there is more happening that reaches beyond the last page of this novel; I was disappointed when it came to the end, I wanted more! There are detailed forensics which also adds to my enjoyment as I love the finer points that lead to the police getting their man!

Il semble que Mark Billingham veuille faire évoluer son personnage dans une autre direction, hors de Londres par exemple pour les deux derniers livres, à voir ce que cela va donner par la suite. Cleverly you have become a bit player on this large stage and therefore have a vested interest in discovering the truth. 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. 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.Le roman s'intéresse un peu plus au personnage de Helen, à son passé - et on tombe, sinon dans le cliché, du moins dans le déjà vu maintes fois.