Scaredy Cat [Import] [Hardcover]

Mark Billingham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2002

Mark Billingham's second novel. Scaredy Cat... 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. It is a grisly coincidence that eerily echoes the murder of two other women, stabbed to death months before on the same day.. t 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. Finding the body used to be the worst part of the job. Not any more. Now each time a body is found, Thorne must live with the knowledge that somewhere out there is a second victim, waiting to be discovered. But whilst the methods might be the same, the manner of the killings is strikingly different and Thorne comes to realise that he is hunting two very different killers. One is ruthless and in control, while his partner in crime is submissive, compliant, terrified. 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... Scaredy Cat is the second Tom Thorne novel. It was published in the UK by Time Warner Books in July 2002. It was nominated for the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year and won the Sherlock Award for best detective created by a UK author.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown; First Edition edition (2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316859532
• ISBN-13: 978-0316859530
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,984,136 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