Scaredy Cat (Tom Thorne Novels)

Mark Billingham

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0751548863 ISBN 13: 9780751548860

Publisher: Sphere, 2012

The second book in the Tom Thorne series, from bestselling author Mark Billingham.

TWO WOMEN DEAD
It was a vicious, calculated murder. The killer selected his victim at Euston station, followed her home on the tube, strangled her to death in front of her child. At the same time, killed in the same way, a second body is discovered at the back of King's Cross station. And this grisly event eerily echoes the murder of two other women, stabbed to death months before on the same day.

TWO KILLERS WORKING TOGETHER
It is DI Tom Thorne who sees the link and comes to the horrifying conclusion. This is not a serial killer the police are up against. This is two of them - and two killers are way more deadly than one . . .
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The outstanding new Tom Thorne thriller, THEIR LITTLE SECRET, is out now!

Review:

Mark Billingham's Scaredy Cat is as inventive his previous serial killer novel a Sleepyhead. Detective Inspector Tom Thorne has the job of watching out for patterns and thinks he spots one--two similar killings on the same day; women followed from a mainline station and then strangled. Rapidly, though, it becomes clear that the methods differed in all sorts of ways--one killing was controlled, the other frenzied--and the timings do not work out. On a hunch, Thorne checks for other such pairings and finds them--this time two killers are working as a team, one setting the other challenges.

We know what Thorne does not, that all of this has to do with things that happened at school years ago; we also know a lot more than Thorne about the demons that drive some of his own investigating team. Billingham sets himself some complicated technical challenges here--flashes back and forwards, and closeups of killers' minds that keep crucial information from us--and some of the complications don't quite work. Overall, though, this is a terrifying exploration of brutal madness, made all the more so by touches of compassion for the killer's victims--the killer may think this a game, but we and Thorne know it is not.--Roz Kaveney

Review:

Murder and mystery do not come better than this What's on in London Brisk, racy read The Times Assured and shocking thriller The Guardian A cunning variation on the serial-murder theme Sunday Telegraph