Time of Death (Tom Thorne Novels)

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It's always there, hidden in a couple of sentences that don't particularly make sense, that you skate over in your rush to get on with the story. The holiday is short lived when Helen hears the news involving an old school friend whose husband has been arrested in connection with 2 missing school girls.

This series is now well established with some strong characters that regular readers will already be familiar with. I do love crimes that are set in small communities, there is something very distinctive about the way they operate, with everyone knowing so much about each other’s lives, the suspicion of outsiders, the gossip and the protection and tolerance of their own, up to a point. Billingham goes to great lengths to immerse the reader in this novel – the settings are so vivid you can imagine yourself walking down the main street of the small town of Polesford. Thank you to NetGalley, publishers Grove Atlantic and author Mark Billingham for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I love the characters of Helen, Thorne and Hendricks and have become very comfortable with these characters, their banter, their humour, sarcasm and intelligence…the dialogue is exceptionally natural and believable and the characters develop and grow with each new novel. There are revelations about many of the characters, some truly ingenious reasoning by Hendricks, the pathologist and friend of Thorne and Weeks, some terrifying excerpts from the victim and a real mystery to be solved. This time Thorne is not on a case at all, but on holidays with his partner Helen Weeks (also a cop and the main character in Billingham's novel, In The Dark which I have but have not yet read). Good story line, probably helped in my head by the familiarity of most of the locations and experience of what they are like when they flood. At first reluctant, Thorne soon finds himself interested in the investigation and at odds with the local police.

It’s always good news to discover a new author and I will be following this series for sure as it continues.

An interesting aspect of the book was having Helen play a larger role and getting to understand her background to see what makes her tick. This book has quite a lot of love in it, the characters are very close and very connected, They care about each other. As his partner faces up to a past she has tried desperately to forget and a media storm engulfs the town, Thorne becomes convinced that, despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt, the police have got the wrong man.