The Burning Girl by Mark Billingham
Apr. 17th, 2006 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
X marks the spot - and when that spot is a corpse's naked back and the X is carved in blood, DR Tom Thorne is in no doubt that the dead man is the latest victim of a particularly vicious contract killer. This is turf warfare between North London gangs. Organised-crime boss Billy Ryan is moving into someone else's patch, and that someone is not best pleased. For Thorne, a tenuous link between two cases becomes two pieces of the same puzzle; past and present fuse together to form a new and very nasty riddle.
And when an X is carved on Thorne's front door, he knows that the smouldering embers of a long-dead case are about to erupt into flames ...
I'm going to start out by saying that I enjoyed Mark Billingham's first two DI Thorne books (Lazy Bones and Scaredy Cat) - they're good mysteries, fast-paced and whilst they don't add anything to the genre (we have a police officer who's single, finds it difficult to sustain relationships, is a maverick and listens to country and western), they're solid reads. I haven't read Sleepy Head but as it happens, apart from a couple of references to that book, you don't need to have read it to enjoy this one.
The problem I have with this book is that the Blurb on the Back bears little resemblence to the actual plot of the book. If you just read the Blurb, you'd think that this is about a quest to find a contract killer. It isn't - or at least, it's at best the back-story to the novel in that it takes place off-the-page. The actual plot of this book hangs around a closed case and an on-going gang war between Billy Ryan and a Turkish outfit. The closed case concerns a sixteen year old girl who was horrifically burned after being set on fire in a school playground. Gordon Rooker confessed to the crime and is currently in jail (albeit up for parole). The problem is that the investigating officer on that case - Carole Chamberlain is being subjected to phone calls from a man claiming that he was the real perpetrator. As the story progresses, Thorne realises that there are connections between the closed case and the participants in the current gangwar - specifically though the gangland leader of Billy Ryan. The bulk of the novel is taken up with the exploration of these connections and Thorne's attempts to work out what the next move will be in the gangwar and stop it before it happens.
In addition to the disappointment I felt about the story, I was also a little let down at how easy it was to figure out the twists. I spotted the main plot twist about half-way in and there are a number of turns that will leave you thinking that Thorne is a serious twit. If it wasn't for the fact that Billingham retains his gift for fast-pacing and has created an interesting character in Thorne, I'd probably not recommend it. The particular thing that I like about Billingham's character is the time he takes to draw out the relationship between Thorne and his father (who is suffering from Alzheimer's). There's a particularly heart-breaking scene where Thorne and his aunt take his father for a day trip to the seaside, only for the old man to start making filthy bingo calls during a bingo game. It's funny but it's also sad and it gives Thorne a lot of humanity.
Whilst Billingham does well with the recurring characters of Thorne, Hendricks (the gay pathologist), Holland and Chamberlain, I think that the 'non-recurring' characters suffer in comparison. None of the gangland characters rise above cariacture (and the treatment of the Zarif brothers made me feel particularly uncomfortable) and where Billingham uses the device of reproducing extracts from the 16 year old burns victim's diary, the language (both for a teenage girl and a teenage girl in the 80s) simply doesn't convince.
The Verdict:
A little predictable, but still a well-written page-turner. Billingham leaves the book on an open note that makes me interested to see what happens next to Thorne, but if I'm to stay with the series I need a little less contrivance in the plot.
X marks the spot - and when that spot is a corpse's naked back and the X is carved in blood, DR Tom Thorne is in no doubt that the dead man is the latest victim of a particularly vicious contract killer. This is turf warfare between North London gangs. Organised-crime boss Billy Ryan is moving into someone else's patch, and that someone is not best pleased. For Thorne, a tenuous link between two cases becomes two pieces of the same puzzle; past and present fuse together to form a new and very nasty riddle.
And when an X is carved on Thorne's front door, he knows that the smouldering embers of a long-dead case are about to erupt into flames ...
I'm going to start out by saying that I enjoyed Mark Billingham's first two DI Thorne books (Lazy Bones and Scaredy Cat) - they're good mysteries, fast-paced and whilst they don't add anything to the genre (we have a police officer who's single, finds it difficult to sustain relationships, is a maverick and listens to country and western), they're solid reads. I haven't read Sleepy Head but as it happens, apart from a couple of references to that book, you don't need to have read it to enjoy this one.
The problem I have with this book is that the Blurb on the Back bears little resemblence to the actual plot of the book. If you just read the Blurb, you'd think that this is about a quest to find a contract killer. It isn't - or at least, it's at best the back-story to the novel in that it takes place off-the-page. The actual plot of this book hangs around a closed case and an on-going gang war between Billy Ryan and a Turkish outfit. The closed case concerns a sixteen year old girl who was horrifically burned after being set on fire in a school playground. Gordon Rooker confessed to the crime and is currently in jail (albeit up for parole). The problem is that the investigating officer on that case - Carole Chamberlain is being subjected to phone calls from a man claiming that he was the real perpetrator. As the story progresses, Thorne realises that there are connections between the closed case and the participants in the current gangwar - specifically though the gangland leader of Billy Ryan. The bulk of the novel is taken up with the exploration of these connections and Thorne's attempts to work out what the next move will be in the gangwar and stop it before it happens.
In addition to the disappointment I felt about the story, I was also a little let down at how easy it was to figure out the twists. I spotted the main plot twist about half-way in and there are a number of turns that will leave you thinking that Thorne is a serious twit. If it wasn't for the fact that Billingham retains his gift for fast-pacing and has created an interesting character in Thorne, I'd probably not recommend it. The particular thing that I like about Billingham's character is the time he takes to draw out the relationship between Thorne and his father (who is suffering from Alzheimer's). There's a particularly heart-breaking scene where Thorne and his aunt take his father for a day trip to the seaside, only for the old man to start making filthy bingo calls during a bingo game. It's funny but it's also sad and it gives Thorne a lot of humanity.
Whilst Billingham does well with the recurring characters of Thorne, Hendricks (the gay pathologist), Holland and Chamberlain, I think that the 'non-recurring' characters suffer in comparison. None of the gangland characters rise above cariacture (and the treatment of the Zarif brothers made me feel particularly uncomfortable) and where Billingham uses the device of reproducing extracts from the 16 year old burns victim's diary, the language (both for a teenage girl and a teenage girl in the 80s) simply doesn't convince.
The Verdict:
A little predictable, but still a well-written page-turner. Billingham leaves the book on an open note that makes me interested to see what happens next to Thorne, but if I'm to stay with the series I need a little less contrivance in the plot.
