Lifeless by Mark Billingham
Feb. 10th, 2007 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
To friends and enemies alike, it looks as though Detective Inspector Tom Thorne's career is on the skids. But his situation is not as dire as that of London's homeless.
Three men, sleeping rough on streets paved with anything but gol, have been murdered - each victim kicked to death and found with a £20 note pinned to his chest. Were they killed at random or where they targeted for a reason.
Thorne is seconded to the same streets. Not as a policemen on the beat but as one of life's rejects. It fits: he looks the part - and feels it as well. In a harsh and harrowing netherworld, with its own rules and moral code, Thorne discovers the horrifying link between the homeless victims and the perpetrators of a fifteen-yeal-old atrocity. Those who know are saying nothing. But the word on these streets is that the killer is a cop. A policeman, it seems, was sniffing around long before Thorne came on the scene ...
I'm quite a fan of Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne series - the first book, 'Sleepyhead' had a wonderful plot (so good that they ripped it off for the pilot of CSI: New York) and I found the Johnny Cash loving detective, his gay pathologist friend and his subordinates to be very human and I've enjoyed the way in which all of the characters have grown as the series has progressed. So why is Lifeless such a disappointment?
Well it's to do with a legacy problem from its predecessor, The Burning Girl. At the end of this book, Tom's father (who suffers from Alzheimer's) dies in a house fire. For reasons connected with the plot of that book (and reasons which never really convinced me), Tom agonises as to whether or not the fire had been caused deliberately by a crime lord with a grudge against him. Lifeless is really all about Thorne trying to come to terms with his father's death and his guilt that he may have been murdered. Think of it as 450+ pages of angsty woe as seen from London's streets. For me (and despite his best intentions), Billingham devotes too much time to his main character's problems at the expense of the plot, which actually has a number of glaring plot holes when you think about it.
For starters, you slowly discover that the men were part of a tank unit during the first Iraq war who committed an atrocity. The murders are triggered after one member of the crew tries to blackmail one of the other's involved for money. Because it turns out that all the crew members have video tapes showing what they did as insurance to make sure that no one blabs. Think about that for a second. You commit an atrocity, which you film for posperity so that no one can use it against you. Yeah. That makes sense. Even if I was to buy into that premise, there is a bigger problem in that the killer isn't just killing crew members - he's also targetting random homeless people, for reasons that are never really explained. There's also a problem with the fact that £20 notes are left on the victims. We're to presume that the murderer is doing it to make a point about the blackmail, but if he kills the entire crew, who is going to understand the message?
I can't fault Billingham's research into the homeless living on London's streets. It's clear that he's done a lot to try and see things from this perspective and he gives a lot of information without it ever seeming like a text book. I also can't fault his narrative style, which is fluid and very easy to read. I particularly like the touches of humour that he puts in and which juxtaposes nicely with the horrific violence. Unfortunately, this isn't enough in itself to save the book from its plot holes.
The Verdict:
Hopefully this is just a blip in the series and Mark Billingham will return to the tightly plotted novels that made me enjoy this series. Disappointing. Incidentally, the typo in the Blurb on the Back is not mine.
To friends and enemies alike, it looks as though Detective Inspector Tom Thorne's career is on the skids. But his situation is not as dire as that of London's homeless.
Three men, sleeping rough on streets paved with anything but gol, have been murdered - each victim kicked to death and found with a £20 note pinned to his chest. Were they killed at random or where they targeted for a reason.
Thorne is seconded to the same streets. Not as a policemen on the beat but as one of life's rejects. It fits: he looks the part - and feels it as well. In a harsh and harrowing netherworld, with its own rules and moral code, Thorne discovers the horrifying link between the homeless victims and the perpetrators of a fifteen-yeal-old atrocity. Those who know are saying nothing. But the word on these streets is that the killer is a cop. A policeman, it seems, was sniffing around long before Thorne came on the scene ...
I'm quite a fan of Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne series - the first book, 'Sleepyhead' had a wonderful plot (so good that they ripped it off for the pilot of CSI: New York) and I found the Johnny Cash loving detective, his gay pathologist friend and his subordinates to be very human and I've enjoyed the way in which all of the characters have grown as the series has progressed. So why is Lifeless such a disappointment?
Well it's to do with a legacy problem from its predecessor, The Burning Girl. At the end of this book, Tom's father (who suffers from Alzheimer's) dies in a house fire. For reasons connected with the plot of that book (and reasons which never really convinced me), Tom agonises as to whether or not the fire had been caused deliberately by a crime lord with a grudge against him. Lifeless is really all about Thorne trying to come to terms with his father's death and his guilt that he may have been murdered. Think of it as 450+ pages of angsty woe as seen from London's streets. For me (and despite his best intentions), Billingham devotes too much time to his main character's problems at the expense of the plot, which actually has a number of glaring plot holes when you think about it.
For starters, you slowly discover that the men were part of a tank unit during the first Iraq war who committed an atrocity. The murders are triggered after one member of the crew tries to blackmail one of the other's involved for money. Because it turns out that all the crew members have video tapes showing what they did as insurance to make sure that no one blabs. Think about that for a second. You commit an atrocity, which you film for posperity so that no one can use it against you. Yeah. That makes sense. Even if I was to buy into that premise, there is a bigger problem in that the killer isn't just killing crew members - he's also targetting random homeless people, for reasons that are never really explained. There's also a problem with the fact that £20 notes are left on the victims. We're to presume that the murderer is doing it to make a point about the blackmail, but if he kills the entire crew, who is going to understand the message?
I can't fault Billingham's research into the homeless living on London's streets. It's clear that he's done a lot to try and see things from this perspective and he gives a lot of information without it ever seeming like a text book. I also can't fault his narrative style, which is fluid and very easy to read. I particularly like the touches of humour that he puts in and which juxtaposes nicely with the horrific violence. Unfortunately, this isn't enough in itself to save the book from its plot holes.
The Verdict:
Hopefully this is just a blip in the series and Mark Billingham will return to the tightly plotted novels that made me enjoy this series. Disappointing. Incidentally, the typo in the Blurb on the Back is not mine.
