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BLOOD LINE
by Mark Billingham
Little, Brown, August 2009
352 pages
16.99 GBP
ISBN: 1408700670


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Mark Billingham's rumpled hero DI Tom Thorne took a back seat in the author's previous book, IN THE DARK. He's now present, correct and conflicted in BLOOD LINE.

Thorne is one of those cops, much beloved of the genre, who doesn't do relationships very well. Over the course of the series he's established a partnership with fellow cop Louise Porter. Trying to domesticate Thorne is like trying to tame a feral cat, though, so there's angst aplenty with Louise stuck in hospital after a miscarriage and our hero stumbling over how to provide support for her.

He resorts to work and what seems like a routine, if gory, murder. A woman is found dead with a fragment of x-ray grasped in her hand. Thorne and his crew discover that Emily Walker's mother was murdered 15 years previously by serial killer Raymond Garvey. More bodies and more bits of x-ray are uncovered and it becomes clear that someone is killing the children of Garvey's victims – but Garvey himself is dead.

BLOOD LINE is one of those race against the clock novels where the police know exactly what's going to happen, and must try to prevent the murders. This makes for a tense and bloody conclusion, as the killer strikes at the heart of the investigation.

It's good to see Thorne back in action. Billingham's biggest strengths have always been his authentic-sounding dialogue and the fact that his characters are so real. The stand-out moments for me are the scenes between Thorne and his best mate Phil Hendricks, the gay tattooed pathologist whose love life is as patchy as Thorne's. Their back-chat crackles with authenticity – it really is the way two blokes banter with each other.

There's another appearance for retired cop Carol Chamberlain, a woman who clearly misses her career. And among the striking new faces is Nina Collins, the prostitute friend of one of the killer's targets.

BLOOD LINE isn't the best in the series – Thorne's personal baggage slows it up a wee bit and the killer's motives aren't 100 per cent convincing. But Billingham even fractionally below top form still blows most of the opposition out of the water.

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, October 2009

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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