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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Blood Line - Mark Billingham, 9 Aug 2009
I have been counting down the days to the release of the next Tom Thorne novel. In Blood Line, Thorne is searching for a killer linked to a previous case - that of serial killer Raymond Garvey who murdered 7 women 15 years ago.
I think this is a 5-star read:
* Characterisation - If you have read all of the Thorne novels you will have shared his professional and personal ups and downs. Now we see a more sensitive side to him, particularly given through his inner most thoughts when on the train or listening to a CD.
Alongside Thorne are the credible and rich characters of Phil Hendricks, Louise Taylor and Carol Chamberlain - all of whom bring out a different dimension to Thorne's personality.
*Dialogue -- This is so natural. The humour makes you smile and in general is not linked to the crimes themselves. It reminded me a little of RD Wingfield in the respect of the realism put across through dialogue.
* The strength of the plot. You may work out some clues as you go along but this will not detract from the plot or spoil the twists.
* The pace - There are times when the pace slows down to match when the investigation is not moving as fast as Thorne would like. Then in the last few chapters I found that I was racing through them to keep up with Thorne's necessity for speed.
* The writing is quality. I thought the opening chapter and how this links in later gave great impact and the plot's realism enhanced by giving us different first-hand perspectives from various characters.
I only had one slight criticism and that is the murderer's motive did not seem to come strongly across to me as in previous Billingham novels. Overall this is well-written and visual - when's the TV series coming out?
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Thorne in the side of the competition, 22 Aug 2009
DI Tom Thorne is becoming one of the great characters in modern detective fiction. Over the course of the series that began with Sleepyhead, we've watched him evolve through various personal challenges, never losing his slightly world-weary, cynical approach to his life and career.
In Bloodline, Thorne is on the trail of a killer who is targeting the children of the victims of serial killer Raymond Garvey several years earlier. Garvey is now serving a sentence for his crimes but someone seems to be following in his footsteps. It's this intriguing premise which forms the core of the plot. Thorne is aided and abetted by a now familiar cast of colleagues: Brigstocke, Kitson, Holland, Hendricks and semi-retired Carol Chamberlain.
What makes this series so good is that the characters feel so much more real than in many regular police procedurals. The dialogue is realistic and the characters don't speak in cliches. Medical examiner Hendricks, Thorne's closest friend, is a perfect example, always adding a good deal of humour. Billingham's skills as a stand-up comedian lend themselves to his writing and balance the darker moments of his work. And perhaps because the characters do seem so much like real people, as a reader it's easy to grow to care for them.
Bloodline is another fine story with enough suspects, twists and turns to keep the reader guessing until the very end. Whether read as a starting point to the series or in sequence with the rest, it's another highly enjoyable tale which should satisfy any lover of British crime fiction. Highly recommended.
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10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Solid Addition to the Tom Thorne Series, 11 Aug 2009
After taking a sabbatical from DI Tom Thorne last year with the standalone thriller 'In The Dark', Mark Billingham returns to the series that made his name; and the break seems to have done both him and his fictional detective inspector some good.
After the brilliant 'Sleepyhead' and 'Scaredy Cat' I felt some of the later books in the series were occasionally patchy and a bit jaded. I found 'Death Message' and 'Buried' in particular to be bit too dense and claustrophobic, but normal service has been resumed here: the structure of 'Bloodline' has a much looser feel and is reminiscent in style of the first two books mentioned above.
In this latest volume, Thorne and co identify a murderer who appears to be bumping off the offspring of a previous serial killer's victims. They must not only apprehend the new killer, but in the meantime, protect the remaining people at risk.
Thorne isn't quite as curmudgeonly as normal, despite the fact that at the outset of the book his partner Louise Glover has suffered a miscarriage. He's back to wisecracking with his (mostly awful) jokes and occasional flashes of impatience. His great mate Phil Hendricks, the gay, shaven-headed pathologist, is also in good form and there's some fine banter between the pair.
The relationship between the two men has often provided some of the more touching (and certainly, funniest) moments in the series, and in this book Louise gets to share some time with Hendrix, which puts Thorne out a bit. In addition to bringing back Carol Chamberlain from the 'wrinkly squad' Mark has created another excellent character in Nina Collins, the prostitute friend of one of his serial killer's targets. In fact, in terms of characterisation as a whole, you're looking at an entire catalogue of deftly drawn and believable people in this book, and this is one of the author's strengths.
The main twist of the story is one I guessed 50 pages before it was revealed and is very reminiscent of a piece of misdirection found in a previous book (which I won't name, in the interests of not spoiling it for you). However, he handles it more subtly here and doesn't make it quite so obvious what's to come. In fact, I'd go as far to say that if you've not read Billingham before, you probably won't spot it and might therefore get more out of 'Bloodline'
Although this is inventive, it still falls short of the better, earlier books - these were written with such a fresh, original voice that Mark will find it difficult to top them. Nevertheless, despite there being no real surprises (at least for me) in here, and despite my finding it difficult to believe in his killer's motivation for murder, this is fast-paced stuff that I devoured in three sittings over a 24-hour period. When in his best form, Mark has the ability to keep his readers turning the pages, daring them to put the book down, and here he provides an entertaining read - if not quite at the top of his form - that I found hard to leave alone once I'd begun it.
Not the best book in the series, but certainly not the worst, this should keep most fans happy until the next one.
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