Customer Reviews
Bruised by the murky world he inhabits - By: R. Nicholson-morton, 18 Mar 2008 
Thorne's patch is London & it's obvious that Billingham knows the territory & describes it well. This is the dark side of our capital city & it's brimming with nasty characters. He knows some high-ranking officers on the flying squad & the murder squad who look over his manuscripts for him, so his accuracy on police procedure is pretty good.
Some cases don't seem to go away, even after eighteen years. In 1986 Rooker, a particularly unpleasant man, was charged with setting alight a school-girl, Jessica. She was horribly disfigured & after many painful skin-grafts she committed suicide. It transpired that Rooker had burned the wrong girl, his real target had been the daughter of the local gangland boss, Kelly. This is no consolation to Jessica's grieving father. Yet now, after alll this time, Rooker confesses that he didn't actuallly commit the crime... Thorne investigates & meets Jessica's best friend, Alison Kelly, who is still traumatised with guilt.
Nothing is black & white in Thorne's world. As the books progress, we learn more about Thorne - as Billingham has put it, `to peel away a different layer with every book.'
Thorne's also coping with his father suffering from senile dementia - these scenes are quite amusing in a sad funny way & are gently handled by ex-stand-up comedian Billingham. When we read Jessica's diary notes, we empathise with the poor brave girl: her character shines out of these few pages, no mean feat for any writer to achieve.
To complicate matters, two North London organised crime gangs are at war, the Ryans & the Turkish family, Zarif. There are convoluted connections between the Ryans & the Kelly family. Memories go back a long way, as do grudges. Into this simmering mix is dropped a vicious contract killer.
Thorne doesn't do a great deal of detecting but by his actions he becomes the catalyst that ignites both sides into murderous retaliation.
Bruised by the murky world he inhabits, Thorne tries to do the right thing but finds time & again that he must cross his self-imposed line if any kind of justice is to be served. He is a very human copper & we can believe in him.
Crime fiction remains ever popular & the Thorne novels are certainly worth your attention if you like your crime dark & meaningful.
Fourth Book in the Series - By: J. Chippindale, 11 Nov 2007 Mark Billingham was born & brought up in Birmingham. Having worked for some years as an actor & more recently as a TV writer & stand-up comedian his first crime novel was published in 2001.
Though still occasionallly working as a stand-up comic, Mark now concentrates on writing the series of crime novels featuring London-based detective Tom Thorne. Mark lives in North London with his wife & two children.
For any new readers who have not read any of Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne books, you are missing a real treat. Start reading them now, I am sure you will not be disappointed.
Carol Chamberlain seeks the help of DI Tom Thorne. She was the arresting officer in a case twenty years ago & she is now retired. The case, a particularly nasty one involved a young woman, Jessica Clarke being set alight. Her attacker is still in jail but someone is harassing Carol, claiming that he was the one who set the girl alight.
The original suspect, when caught, freely admitted to the crime, so what is going on. Tom Thorne is up to the proverbial eye-ballls in an investigation but is fed up with having to report his every move the DCI Tughan, so trying to help Carol out seems like a little light relief. However things soon start to turn nasty & Thorne doesn't realise just how nasty . . .
Not His Best - By: J.Flood, 09 Nov 2007 
I found that this book was not as enjoyable a read, as some of his other books, most notably Scaredy Cay & Lazy Bones. The plot of the girl been burned twenty years ago, & a tenuous link, with a current day gang 'turf' war, was quite interesting. However, I thought some of the 'bad guys' in the novel were a bit one-dimensional. I also found my attention wandering a bit, with this novel, something, that has never happened when reading any of the authors previous novels.
Overalll, the book was not that bad, I just felt it was not as good as some of his other novels.
A Book that Lacks Spark - By: Sam, 31 Oct 2007 20 years ago a girl was set on fire whist talking to friends in a playground. The man who confessed to the attack is nearing his time of parole & he now wants to tell the police that he did not do it. He claims that the attack was made as part of a gangland war & he is willing to talk. DI Thorne is not sure whether to believe the man, but his retraction has sparked a fresh wave of violence on the streets of North London as two rival gangs reopen old wounds. With a mysterious killer stalking the criminals of London, DI Thorne & his task team must work fast to prevent a bloodbath.
`The Burning Girl' is a good thriller that fails to fully spark into life. The idea of an apparently closed case causing a new gangland war is a good one & the elements that tackle the cold case are good. It is the more modern attacks that are not as interesting as we are introduced to a series of different gangland types who we never reallly like anyway. This is exemplified by the mundane nature that the case takes with it concentrating on police procedures rather than a maverick cop on the loose. Thorne only gets to flex his muscles in the last fifth & the energy that he brings to the conclusion is sorely missing from the rest of the book. I still enjoyed reading this, but you can tell that there was far more potential than eventuallly offered.
A page-turner but with too contrived a plot - By: tybalt-quin, 06 Jun 2007 The problem I have with this book is that the book jacket blurb bears little resemblence to the actual plot of the book. If you just read the book jacket, you'd think that this is about a quest to find a contract killer. It isn't - or at least, it's at best the back-story to the novel in that it takes place off-the-page. The actual plot of this book hangs around a closed case & an on-going gang war between Billy Ryan & a Turkish outfit. The closed case concerns a sixteen year old girl who was horrificallly burned after being set on fire in a school playground. Gordon Rooker confessed to the crime & is currently in jail (albeit up for parole). The problem is that the investigating officer on that case - Carole Chamberlain is being subjected to phone callls from a man claiming that he was the real perpetrator. As the story progresses, Thorne realises that there are connections between the closed case & the participants in the current gangwar - specificallly though the gangland leader of Billy Ryan. The bulk of the novel is taken up with the exploration of these connections & Thorne's attempts to work out what the next move will be in the gangwar & stop it before it happens.
In addition to the disappointment I felt about the story, I was also a little let down at how easy it was to figure out the twists. I spotted the main plot twist about half-way in & there are a number of turns that will leave you thinking that Thorne is a serious twit. If it wasn't for the fact that Billingham retains his gift for fast-pacing & has created an interesting character in Thorne, I'd probably not recommend it.
I did like time Billingham takes to draw out the relationship between Thorne & his father, who is suffering from Alzheimer's. There's a particularly heart-breaking scene where Thorne & his aunt take his father for a day trip to the seaside, only for the old man to start making filthy bingo callls during a bingo game. It's funny but it's also sad & it gives Thorne a lot of humanity.
Whilst Billingham does well with the recurring characters of Thorne, Hendricks (the gay pathologist), Holland & Chamberlain, I think that the 'non-recurring' characters suffer in comparison. None of the gangland characters rise above cariacture (and the treatment of the Zarif brothers made me feel particularly uncomfortable) & where Billingham uses the device of reproducing extracts from the 16 year old burns victim's diary, the language (both for a teenage girl & a teenage girl in the 80s) simply doesn't convince.
