It has been a decade since Alan Langford's charred remains were discovered in his burnt-out car. His wife Donna was found guilty of conspiracy to murder her husband and served ten years in prison. But just before she is released, Donna receives a nasty shock: an anonymous letter containing a photo of her husband. The man she hates with every fibre of her being ? the man she paid to have murdered ? seems very much alive and well. How is it possible that her husband is still alive? Where is he? Who sent the photo, and why? DI Tom Thorne becomes involved in a case where nothing and no one are what they seem. It will take him much further from his London beat than he has ever been before ? and closer to a killer who will do anything to protect his new life.
'While Billingham has well and truly mastered the modern police procedural, the thing that sets him apart from the crowd is not just his emotional insight, but the way he invariably packs such a heart-wrenching punch... Billingham's most desperately gripping read yet' Mirror
'As fictional detectives go, Thorne is one of the most believable and Billingham's deserved status as a world-class crime fiction writer will surely be confirmed when a new television series based on some of his novels is aired this autumn' Daily Mail
'Billingham is well aware that we're au fait with most police procedural scenarios and is always working to ring clever and inventive changes on the formula...the tension is fine-tuned with all the usual skill' Daily Express
'Most fictional sleuths are flawed but invariably triumphant; Billingham is unusually willing to show his series hero making blunder after blunder' Sunday Times
'A fast moving, straight-up cop story in a series that is about to hit television' Literary Review
'Billingham pulls it off with his usual panache and good writing' The Times
'Unputdownable tale' Bella
'Excellent' The Sun
'A well plotted police procedural with touchingly human characters' Choice
'A guaranteed page-turner' Sport
'Energetic, subtle writing and fully fleshed characters' Morning Star
'An absorbing and disturbing thriller... the ending brilliantly blindsides the reader... A crime novel for grown-ups' Evening Standard
'When it comes to rough justice with a cold hard edge of authenticity, no one does it better than the brutal but brilliant Mr Billingham' Daily Record
Author
About Mark Billingham
Mark Billingham has been awarded the 2003 Sherlock Award as the creator of the Best Detective created by a British writer and has twice won the Theakston's Old Peculier prize for best novel of the year.
Each of the novels featuring Detective Inspector Tom Thorne has been a Sunday Times bestseller. Sleepyhead and Scaredy Cat were made into a hit TV series on Sky 1 starring David Morrissey as Thorne, and a series based on the novels In the Dark and Time of Death was broadcast on BBC1.
Mark lives in north London with his wife and two children.
A dogged London cop whose beat somehow invariably crosses into the dark side and confronts evil at its cleverest.DEATH MESSAGE is the 7th in the series, and BLOOD LINE appears in August 2009.
