Book Review

By Derryll White

Billingham, Mark (2009).  Blood Line.

I have never read Mark Billingham. I noticed that he has seven novels published in the Detective Inspector Tom Thorne series. For that reason I expected the character to be well-developed at this point. It became clear very quickly in reading that this is a British novel, which I did not know. The train spotting and “little sods” clued me in pretty quickly.

I appreciated the immediate breathe of humanity Billingham injected into the story. Thorne and his partner Louise struggle with a miscarriage, living arrangements – real-life situations that I can relate to. I like the sense of reality that Billingham captures so easily, something that some writers never achieve.

Mark Billingham is a real thriller writer. The book is titled ‘Blood Line’ and the reader is never far from death in this novel. The author examines some psychological reasoning for killing, but can never really explain what motivates the serial murderer.

I liked the way Detective Inspector Tom Thorne, his significant other Louise, and their mutual friend psychologist Phil Hendricks, develop as central characters. They become real with real quirks and hurts and pleasures.

Overall, Mark Billingham has too many people die for me to really enjoy the novel. He is a good storyteller and a decent but not remarkable writer, and he does convey a sense of England. It is just not quite enough for me to hunt down more Tom Thorne here in Canada.

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Excerpts from the novel:

NOMENCLATURE – Dead. Dead inside you.

He wondered if he should try it for size himself, trot it out the next time he had to meet someone at a mortuary or knock on some poor sod’s door, in the middle of the night.

Thing is, your husband’s run into some drunken idiot with a knife in his pocket.  I’m afraid he’s… no longer viable.

MEN – ‘D and C’?

Louise was studying the instructions on her piece of paper.  ‘Dilation and Curettage.’

Thorne waited, none the wiser.  It sounded horrible

‘Scraping,’ Louise said, eventually.

MUSIC – The piped music had changed to what was probably Michael Bolton, but could also have been a large animal in great pain.

NOMENCLATURE – Kambar looked as though he wished he had never asked.  He puffed out his cheeks, said, “Fuck.”

The surprise was clearly evident on Thorne’s face.

“It’s a medical term,” Kambar said.  “One you reserve for when you hear something that makes you feel like a hopeless quack with a pocketful of leeches.”

“I use it pretty much the same way,” Thorne said.  “Just more often.”

FAME – …in a world where being famous counted for so much.  Where what you were famous for didn’t matter at all.  A world where couples who weren’t fit to look after hamsters dragged six kids round the supermarket.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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