Smart, decisive, and funny as heck, DS Declan Miller fronts a crime series set in Blackpool that enjoys off the wall storytelling. This is the second in the Detective Miller series, and it’s another absolute corker. We first met this offbeat detective in The Last Dance, and celebrated the start to the series by adding it to the LoveReading Star Books category. Fabulously original, The Wrong Hands now joins its older sister as a star book. DS Miller is still desperate to solve the murder of his wife, and a stolen briefcase containing proof of a contract killing kick-starts this novel. Award-winning author Mark Billingham wields the most wonderfully light yet devastating pen. Humour spears murder and mayhem and the storytelling is such that it captures imaginations as the plot smirks and swaggers its way from beginning to end. Yet as always, darkness is acknowledged with compassion and thoughtfulness. The humour is used to underscore and highlight rather than bulldoze its way through the novel. I loved the partnership between Miller and DS Sara Xiu which continued to develop, while the members of the dance group, competitive criminals and their angry wives, and list-making hitman certainly kept things interesting. Gift-wrapped in Mark Billingham’s fabulous style, The Wrong Hands plays a blinder and comes as highly recommended by our team.
Unconventional Detective Declan Miller has a problem. Still desperate to solve the murder of his wife, a young man has just appeared on his doorstep with a briefcase . . . containing a pair of severed hands.
Miller knows this case is proof of a contract killing commissioned by local ne'er do well Wayne Cutler - a man he suspects might also be responsible for his wife's death. Now Miller has leverage, but unfortunately he also has something that both Cutler and a villainous fast-food kingpin are desperate to get hold of.
Chuck in a Midsomer Murders-obsessed hitman, a psychotic welder and a woman driven over the edge by a wayward Crème Egg, and Miller is in a mess that even he might not be able to dance his way out of.
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.
