Lazybones (Tom Thorne Novels) - Hardcover

Billingham, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316724939 ISBN 13: 9780316724937

Publisher: Little, Brown, 2003

Synopsis

Someone - a woman or somebody pretending to be a woman, is writing to convicted rapists in prison, befriending them and then brutally killing them when they are released.
DI Tom Thorne must discover the link between these killings and a murder/suicide that took place twenty-five years before; a tragedy to which the only witnesses were two small children, now adults and nowhere to be found...

How can you escape a past that will do a lot more than just catch up with you?
And how can Thorne catch a killer, when he doesn't really care about the victims?

About this title

Review:

Lazybones confirms our sense of Mark Billingham as a thriller writer determined to put ever more inventive spins on the police procedural and the serial killer novel. His police officers--hard-working Country fan Thorne, pierced gay pathologist Hendricks and the rest--find themselves on a case that raises complicated issues for them; they have continually to remind themselves that dead rapists have as much right not to be raped and murdered as anyone else.

Billingham's tricksiness--he tells us just enough of what the killer is thinking to keep us intrigued and confused--goes along with a real sense of London's back streets: the shabbiness of small hotels and the lonely hours of the early morning. The case involves not only pursuing present cases, but chasing up back-story; among all its other merits, this is an intelligent and humane discussion of changing attitudes to rape and its investigation. There was a time, after all, not so long ago, when police regularly failed to take rape seriously enough to get convictions. This is not just an ingenious thriller--Billingham makes us care what happens to Thorne, who is in far more jeopardy than he ever begins to know. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

LAZYBONES is insanely gripping, the type of book that can rob you of a whole night's sleep. The dark humour is perfectly weighted, the rhythm of the prose is perfectly quick and our hero is likeably dishevelled and careworn. (BIG ISSUE)

An excellent thriller. (DUBLIN EVENING HERALD)

A compellingly satisfying police procedural that never loosens its grip on your throat. (DAILY MAIL)

LAZYBONES is meticulously researched, as interesting as it is enjoyable. (DAILY MIRROR)

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0316724939
• ISBN 13: 9780316724937
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384