Scaredy Cat [Mass Market Paperback]

Mark Billingham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 2004

It is almost unthinkable that a single maniac would murder two women miles apart on the same day. Yet someone followed Carol Garner home from the train station and strangled her to death in front of her three-year-old son. And, afterwards, Ruth Murray died in a similar manner. The evidence is leading Detective Inspector Tom Thorne to a stunning conclusion: there isn't only one serial killer on the prowl, but a pair of them, working in tandem. And any corpse that turns up in the future just might be accompanied by a second. To stop them both, Thorne must catch a man whose need to manipulate is as great as his need to kill; a man who will threaten those closest to Thorne himself; a man who will show him that the ability to inspire terror is the deadliest weapon of all.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Billingham's second thriller (after Sleepyhead) featuring London Det. Insp. Tom Thorne offers a twist on the serial killer subgenre. Brooding, melancholy Thorne heads a team of detectives who are alerted to the death of a young mother brutally strangled as her three-year-old son looks on. The body of a second murder victim, strangled in the same manner, turns up the same day, and Thorn and his team surmise they have a serial killer on their hands. The first half of the book deals with Thorne's discovery that there are really two killers at work and introduces the childhood backstory of the murderers. The second half picks up speed as the actual hunt commences. Billingham is adept at creating believable characters with ordinary and not-so-ordinary personal problems, then weaving them into the plot in surprising ways. At times, though, he pushes too hard to make Thorne's colleagues quirky: "Thorne stared at the figure in black fleece, with shaved head and a startling collection of facial piercings. Phil Hendricks was not everyone's idea of a pathologist, but he was the best Thorne had ever worked with." Thorne's gloomy internal musings on death and guilt tend to slow things down, but Billingham's handling of the plot is deft, fair and scattered with enough red herrings to open a fish and chips shop. When the mastermind behind both sets of killings is revealed in a dramatic denouement, readers will give the author his due and settle back to wait for the next installment of this dependable series.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

"Red herring" doesn't do justice to the device this taut tale of twinned serial killers employs so deliciously. Obviously having a great time, Billingham releases a small school of herring to keep mystery-solving readers in a pickle. More than a match for Henning Mankell's dour Swede Kurt Wallander, gruff and guilt-ridden Detective Inspector Tom Thorne drives his dedicated but dysfunctional police unit to bring a duo of London murderers to justice during the December holidays. The real meat of this smart, fast-paced procedural lies in its realistically raw characters--detectives and killers as good at their jobs as they are depressed about doing them. Thorne, so blinded by his zeal to crack the case that he'll offhandedly humiliate a supportive supervisor to get his risky plans approved, is the strongest of the lot. But from the ace medical examiner who sports an extra facial piercing for each new boyfriend to a pair of vividly imagined killers, the supporting cast is spot-on as well. Happily, a third entry in this series, which started with Sleepyhead [BKL My 1 02], is already in the pipeline. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Avon (April 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061032204
• ISBN-13: 978-0061032202
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,036,111 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an intense mystery, May 31, 2004

By 

Pangloss "soldierblue" (Woodstock, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Scaredy Cat: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is my first book by author Billingham and I am quite impressed. The plot twists around a pair of serial killers, intertwining the lives of DI Thorne and his crew of investigators. The final unveiling of the killer was quite a surprise, as I had guessed a different character to be the villain. The second half of the book really picks up speed and is hard to put down. You don't want to stop until the killer's identity is uncovered and hopefully he is caught. Intriguing characters, fast moving plot; I highly recommend it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not as good as his first..., October 14, 2004

By 

Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Scaredy Cat: A Novel (Hardcover)

Getting out of the tech genre for awhile, I relaxed with Mark Billingham's Scaredy Cat. This is his follow-up to Sleepyhead (that I really liked)...

A number of killings in England has Tom Thorne looking for a serial killer. The victims are found in pairs, and although the methods are similar, the intensity of the violence is different. He figures there are actually a pair of killers working in tandem. The pair of killers go back to a grammar school friendship, and it's the typical controller/controllee type relationship. The cops quickly get one of the killers, but then try to set a trap for the other one. Unfortunately, the trap backfires and the killer starts to strike closer to home. The question becomes can he be stopped before he kills someone close to Thorne.

As I mentioned above, I really liked Sleepyhead. Very dark, and hard to tell who was guilty and who was innocent. Scaredy Cat was just as dark, but the suspense wasn't there. You find out right away who the killers are, but you're not quite sure about the current identity of the controlling personality. The relationship between the killers is rather complex and somewhat ill-explained, and one of the common elements that tie them together is left to hang out there for far too long. When it's finally revealed, it doesn't seem to have the impact that it was probably intended to. Thorne's personal torments don't seem to do anything but sit there. The relationship between his partner Holland and a female cop with issues also doesn't seem to add anything to the storyline.

Maybe it's just the sophomore jinx, but this novel definitely isn't on par with his first...

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mark Billingham proves he's a "must-read" author, August 1, 2003

By 

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

This review is from: Scaredy Cat: A Novel (Hardcover)

Mark Billingham is a standup comic. I am unfamiliar with his stage work, and perhaps it's just as well, as I would have come to SCAREDY CAT (and, for that matter, his debut novel SLEEPYHEAD) with some preconceived notion that it would be at least quasi-comedic, that Billingham would possibly be a British Donald Westlake. For all I know, Billingham may be the funniest man on the planet, but you couldn't prove it with SCAREDY CAT.

SCAREDY CAT is an almost unrelievedly grim police procedural, though the setting is not a fictionalized New York City but rather modern-day London. The novel focuses on a series of murders being investigated by Team 3 of the unimaginatively named Serious Crime Group (West) of the Met, London Metropolitan Police. Detective Inspector Tom Thorne, introduced in SLEEPYHEAD, is back, and Billingham continues his slow and methodical sketching of Thorne's personality. Thorne may well be one of the most quietly complex characters in modern detective fiction; just when the reader thinks he or she has a handle on him, there is a twist or a turn, and suddenly one's opinion, one's conception, needs revision. Thorne is no genius, and he knows it. This is important; he is able to admit mistakes and to turn, albeit grudgingly, on a dime to correct them, even as he is weighed down by regret.

Ah, and the series of murders. Two women are murdered in London, some distance apart, with enough similarities to convince the police that they are, at least initially, the work of the same person. The murders resemble a pair of killings that occurred several months previously in which two other women were killed on the same day, apparently at the same time. Thorne comes to the conclusion that the two pairs of killings are linked, and that there is not one killer, but two, working in tandem with each other. He is horrified to further realize that, every time one body is found, there will be another waiting to be discovered. And while the methods of the murders may be the same, the killers themselves, it seems, are very, very different.

As the reader follows Thorne and his team (a group of extremely interesting individuals, to say the least) through their investigation, Billingham describes the intricacies of the investigators, the murderers and the survivors, the relatives of the victims left behind in death's wake. And while the identity of one of the murderers is revealed relatively early, the other is not revealed to either Thorne or the reader until the very end. The result is a novel with such skilled pacing that it is almost excruciatingly painful to read it without finishing it in one sitting. Yet it is simultaneously a novel of such simple craft, such intelligence, that one wants to savor it slowly. The result is an interesting dichotomy that few writers are able to achieve.

It is not necessary to read SLEEPYHEAD prior to reading SCAREDY CAT, though a reader introduced to one will inevitably be drawn to the other. Billingham, with only two novels, has become a writer who will undoubtedly be added to many "must-read" lists. Oh, one other thing about SCAREDY CAT: this book has perhaps the saddest Epilogue I have ever read. Don't skip ahead --- you won't really get it unless you read the whole book. And you'll definitely want to read the whole book.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub