Burning Girl (Tom Thorne Novels) [Paperback]

Mark Billingham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 16, 2005 | Series: Tom Thorne Novels

Jessica Clarke had been set alight twenty years ago. Her attacker, quickly tracked down and eager to confess, was still in jail, his career as a hitman for North London gangs now well behind him. So who is harassing Carol Chamberlain, the arresting officer in that case, and claiming that he is the one who burned the girl? Now retired, Carol turns to DI Tom Thorne for help. He's up to his neck in an investigation into a series of killings, which appears to be the result of a turf war between rival gangs, and he's fed up to the gills with reporting to DCI Tughan, so helping Carol out looks like a good deed in a naughty world. Only the world is about to turn much nastier, so nasty in fact that he finds himself longing for a straightforward psycopath to hunt down. In Mark Billingham's fourth novel, he explores the effects of violence and greed on the lives of those who exploit their fellow beings in a novel of exceptional power.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A contract killer is carving his way through North London's criminal underworld, leaving a bloody X on his victims' backs and taking Billy Ryan's gang down one thug at a time. Detective Inspector Tom Thorne and his team know there's a turf war going on, but who's attempting to take over Ryan's racket isn't quite clear. When DCI Carol Chamberlin comes out of retirement to work on the cold case squad and asks Thorne for help solving an old murder, the past and present catch up in what looks like a continuation of a twenty-year-old gang war. And when someone carves an X in Thorne's door, a fuse is lit that stretches from the eponymous burning girl of the title--Chamberlin's old case--to the gang war that's lighting up the London sky. It's a clunky plot that relies on telling more than showing, slowing down the pace and makeing it difficult for the reader to care about any of the principals involved--either the victims or those who seek justic for them. Billingham has written better thrillers (Lazybones, Scaredy Cat), but this one doesn't live up to their promises. --Jane Adams --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown P/B (May 16, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0751534897
• ISBN-13: 978-0751534894
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,297,803 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A nice contrast of humor and horror, August 2, 2005

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Burning Girl: A Novel (Hardcover)

Quietly I have become addicted to Mark Billingham's novels. There haven't been a slew of them --- THE BURNING GIRL, his latest, is only number four --- but that makes it easy to reread the whole lot during the intervening twelve months between books. Billingham has won well-deserved accolades in the field of comedy, so the dark nature of his brilliantly scribed accounts of London Police Detective Tom Thorne comes as a bit of a surprise to those familiar with his other career. Yet his humor shines through, contrasting nicely with the horrors within.

Billingham is at his best in THE BURNING GIRL. The Serious Crime Group, of which Thorne is a member, has been paired with SO7 (The Serious and Organized Crime Group --- I think Billingham is having a bit of fun with these names) to investigate a series of murders in which an "X" is carved into the back of each victim. The victims, one and all, have ties to a gangster named Billy Ryan, and it appears that a major turf war had broken out within London's underworld between Ryan and a gang of Turkish smugglers.

Thorne already is helping his friend Carol Chamberlain investigate a decades-old case involving the immolation of a schoolgirl. That case was apparently solved, with Gordon Rooker, a well-known hitman, incarcerated for the deed. Rooker, however, is recanting his confession and will supposedly reveal the real perpetrator --- with all of it being tied to Ryan. The cases are slowly intersecting when Thorne performs an act of misguided compassion, which serves as a catalyst for a chain of events that begins with a murder and a funeral (Billingham is at his understated, irreverent best at the graveside) and continues to a quietly shocking climax.

Billingham makes some minor demands. The narrative of THE BURNING GIRL, like its predecessors, is peppered with colloquialisms and slang terms that American readers may have some minor difficulty decoding, though things ultimately come clear within the context. And while his plots initially seem a bit tangled in spots, Billingham is an excellent guide, gently leading his readers through the more complex tangles and always providing a reason for it all.

It is Billingham's Thorne, however, who really makes these books in general, and THE BURNING GIRL in particular, worth reading and rereading. Thorne is one of the more intriguing protagonists in contemporary crime fiction; one gets the feeling that he is teetering on the brink of a meltdown, only to save himself, time and again, with his droll but hilarious humor and his first-rate taste in music (anyone who loves Johnny Cash and hates Sting is on the right track). It's a small wonder then that for those familiar with the series, a Billingham novel is an annual event to be anticipated and repeatedly savored. Highly recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Random review of random Billingham book, November 6, 2010

By 

Gideon Reader (South Florida, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Burning Girl (Mass Market Paperback)

It is impossible for ANY author to **eventually** write a book that does not stink.

Suffice it to say that is NOT the case to date with Mark Billingham's work.

They are ALL top quality.

EVERY BOOK he has written to date is superior on many levels.

Subtle levels.

I have purchased (and read) every one of his Tom Thorne series and find each them to be as totally satisfying as a Don Tomas Classico,

an extra large Lagavulin and a heavily garliced Eggplant Parmigiana.

They (the books) are NOT as good as sex. Not even close.

But for police procedurals, close is not too shabby.

Coming from over thirty years; nearly thirty five years of Criminal Investigative background, I find that Mark's efforts do not disrespect the reader.

A very important element many authors ignore, at their literary and qualitative peril.

As we say in certain circles: "Kol HaKovod" Mark.

Continue writing. I'll continue buying and reading.

Oh yes,... I DO like his books.

All of them.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thorne is better with cold cases than organized crime, May 16, 2010

By 

Neal C. Reynolds (Indianapolis, Indiana) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Burning Girl (Mass Market Paperback)

This again is a quite worthy and intriguing tale as is expected from Billingham. However, the investigation of the cold case dealing with a confessed killer up for possible release after 20 years is far more interesting than the investigation involving a Turkish mob. Most of the Thorne novels are tied in with cold cases and this is one of the charms of the series.