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Summary
Summary
Some fires never go out ...
X marks the spot -- and when that spot is a corpse's naked back and the X is carved in blood, Detective Inspector Tom Thorne is in no doubt that the dead man is the latest victim of a particularly vicious contract killer. It's morbid and messy -- but it's a mystery with plenty of clues. This is turf warfare between North London gangs. Organized crime boss Billy Ryan is moving into someone else's territory, and that someone is ready to stand up for what he believes is his.
Thorne's got plenty on his plate when he agrees to help out ex-DCI Carol Chamberlain rake through the ashes of an old case that has come back to haunt her. Schoolgirl Jessica Clarke was lit on fire twenty years ago. Now, Gordon Rooker, the man Chamberlain put away for the crime, is up for parole, and it seems there's a copycat on the prowl.
Or perhaps it's someone trying to right a serious wrong: Jessica Clarke was the victim of mistaken identity. The intended target was the daughter of a gangland boss, a woman who would grow up to marry the current leader, Billy Ryan ...
Thorne quickly identifies a tenuous link between the two crimes, and past and present fuse together to form a new, horrifying riddle. One that involves more killings, violence, greed, and a murderous family with no values -- except gain at any price.
When an X is carved into his front door, Tom Thorne realizes that fires, once thought to be out, continue to burn.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The engrossing fourth novel by British TV writer Billingham to feature London police detective Tom Thorne (after 2004's Lazybones) has a solid, traditional structure and plot, and a whiff of noir sensibility. Thorne is the solid reliable cop whom witnesses trust and colleagues appreciate. Of late, he's taken in his temporarily homeless pal, pathologist Phil Hendricks, and Billingham has fun with this odd couple (Phil is gay, messy and heavily pierced; Thorne is a Lucinda Williams-loving neatnik). Thorne's also willing to help out another friend-prickly, middle-aged ex-DCI Carol Chamberlain-who's uncovered new evidence about a case from the 1980s in which a schoolgirl was set on fire. Moral complexity clouds the picture: the man wrongly imprisoned for that heinous act is a career criminal; empathetic Thorne drifts into an affair with a key witness. A second case, equally complex, involves the murder of a Turkish video store owner, which proves to be just one of an alarming series of killings whose pattern Thorne must determine. Billingham delivers an edgy, ambitious novel with an excellent cast-just as BBC America's Mystery Monday offers a character-driven alternative to the current spate of forensics-heavy American TV police procedurals-and Morrow's betting on this one, with its hardcover-at-a-paperback-price, to break him out big. Agent, Kim Witherspoon. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Gangland killings, bureaucratic backstabbing, Detective Inspector Tom Thorne in a downbeat mood--what else is new? Leading, as ever, one of those lives of quiet desperation, Thorne finds his fourth outing (Lazybones, 2004, etc.) launched with a phone call from someone as melancholic as he is. Ex-DCI Carol Chamberlain is having to contend with slimy Gordon Rooker, or, rather, with someone pretending to be Gordon Rooker, since, in fact, the real Gordon Rooker is doing 20 years in Park Royal Prison for setting fire to schoolgirl Jessica Clarke. The crime, heinous and harrowing enough, gains extra ugliness when it turns out that Jessica was the wrong schoolgirl. Contract killer Rooker mistook Jessica for Alison Kelly, standing next to her, and thereby hangs a tale of economic rivalry, the Kellys being at the time preeminent among North London racket folk. In other words, a message was being sent about turf warfare in the making. But, in all this, what accounts for the transformation of unflappable Claire into someone old and scared? To begin with, she'd never quite been able to get past the sheer grisliness of the Jessica Clarke case--she'd been a lead investigator in it--and now it's alive again, the centerpiece of her nightmares. Even more pressingly, she's being stalked: late-night phone calls plus a shivery letter from the pretend Gordon Rooker. Claire needs help, she acknowledges to Thorne. Meanwhile, back at the Met, a task force is being formed to cope with the sudden ratcheting up of gangland hostilities--a development that forces Thorne to confront an old enemy: DCI Nick Tugham, ambitious, sycophantic and, worst of all, his senior. Street mayhem on the one hand, office politics on the other, plus a dismal ongoing family drama: Will Thorne doloroso ever catch a break? Thriller in a minor key. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The fourth entry in the Tom Thorne series once again finds the chip-shouldered London detective inspector and his investigative team tracking down a child predator. In this case, a prisoner who years ago confessed to dousing a schoolgirl with lighter fluid and then setting her afire claims he wasn't the perp. The fact that someone's now up to similarly gruesome tricks on the outside gives the man's story enough credibility to draw Thorne and a retired colleague into the hunt. Because the original crime was designed to spark a mob war, the cold-case investigation soon dovetails with the team's current focus on tensions between old-school British gangsters and upstart Turkish Kurds (not to mention a contract killer who carves Xs into his victims). It's a solid plot, and Thorne fans will enjoy the book. But it fails to deliver much of the intriguing personal interplay that makes the series stand out--save for a moving subplot involving Thorne's Alzheimer's-afflicted father. The detective's abnormally strident tone in the second half also makes one hope Billingham can recapture the magic next time out. --Frank Sennett Copyright 2005 Booklist
Library Journal Review
London detective Tom Thorne makes a welcome return in Billingham's latest thriller (after Lazybones). Simultaneously familiar and edgy, still drinking and caring too much, Thorne is investigating a series of contract killings distinguished by the letter X carved into the victims' naked backs. When he pairs up with ex-Detective Chief Inspector Carol Chamberlain to work a cold case involving the immolation of a young girl, clues from the separate investigations begin to come together. Suddenly, Thorne finds himself enmeshed with London's biggest gangland family, whose activities include racketeering, retribution killings, and human trafficking. When Thorne discovers an X carved on his front door, he fears it may be too late to save himself. Once again, Billingham has crafted a gripping police procedural filled with multidimensional, realistic characters that will keep readers hooked: Thorne's long-suffering sister and their Alzheimer's-plagued dad; Goth-attired pathologist Phil Hendricks; and detective/struggling new father Dave Holland. Highly recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/05.]-Rebecca House Stankowski, Purdue Univ. Calumet Lib., Hammond, IN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.