In The Dark by Mark Billingham
Jun. 20th, 2010 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
A Deadly Crash
A rainy night in London. It seems that an act of casual gang violence has cost an innocent victim their life. But the reality is even more chilling ...
A Dangerous Quest
A pregnant woman struggles desperately to uncover the truth, and makes herself a target in the process. Just weeks from giving birth, how will she survive in a world where death is an occupational hazard?
A Shocking Twist
In a city where teenage gangs clash with career criminals and where loyalty is paid for in blood, anything is possible. Secrets are uncovered as fast as bodies, and the story’s final twist is as breathtakingly surprising as they come.
DS Helen Weeks is eight months pregnant and making the final preparations for the baby’s arrival with her partner, DS Paul Hopwood. However what should be a happy event is marred by tension between the couple as an old affair of Helen’s has called the baby’s paternity into question and Paul’s unable and unwilling to let go of his suspicions.
Theo’s a teenage boy living with his girlfriend and baby on a council estate. Keen to make some money, he falls in with his old friend Easy, who’s heavily involved in the local gang scene and sells drugs as he tries to work his way up the ladder. As Theo becomes more embroiled in the gang life, he is forced into a gang initiation, one that causes a tragic accident and results in Paul’s death.
As Helen tries to make sense of what’s happened, she uncovers a tangled mess of secrets and lies – of hidden lives and tangles pasts that bring her into contact with hardened career criminals with too much to lose and gangs of teenagers looking for an easy way out of the council estate. The closer she comes to the truth, the closer she gets to giving birth and the more she has to lose ...
Best known for his DI Tom Thorne series, Billingham’s created this stand-alone novel with a completely different set of characters (although Thorne does make a brief cameo). Helen is an interesting and flawed character and her pregnancy is particularly believable. The guilt that she feels at her affair and the tension it creates between her and Paul is well depicted, as is Paul’s resentment and doubts about the pregnancy and the future of their relationship.
The council estate and Theo’s life is convincing – Theo himself is a similarly flawed character – trying to do the best for his family but believing himself to be short on choices. The dialogue between Theo and the other gang members never feels corny, although it is likely to date as slang moves on.
Where the novel falls down though is in the predictability of the plot. The twist at the end was not a surprise – particularly if you are familiar with Billingham’s other books. This is a shame as it’s a tightly plotted novel that kept me reading one and I would be interested to read about what happens to Helen next.
The Verdict:
A stand-alone novel that’s set in the Tom Thorne universe, this is an interesting novel with a unique central character but the twist is too easy to guess. Nevertheless, I’d like to know more about Helen Weeks and she’s definitely a strong enough character to justify her own series.
A rainy night in London. It seems that an act of casual gang violence has cost an innocent victim their life. But the reality is even more chilling ...
A pregnant woman struggles desperately to uncover the truth, and makes herself a target in the process. Just weeks from giving birth, how will she survive in a world where death is an occupational hazard?
In a city where teenage gangs clash with career criminals and where loyalty is paid for in blood, anything is possible. Secrets are uncovered as fast as bodies, and the story’s final twist is as breathtakingly surprising as they come.
DS Helen Weeks is eight months pregnant and making the final preparations for the baby’s arrival with her partner, DS Paul Hopwood. However what should be a happy event is marred by tension between the couple as an old affair of Helen’s has called the baby’s paternity into question and Paul’s unable and unwilling to let go of his suspicions.
Theo’s a teenage boy living with his girlfriend and baby on a council estate. Keen to make some money, he falls in with his old friend Easy, who’s heavily involved in the local gang scene and sells drugs as he tries to work his way up the ladder. As Theo becomes more embroiled in the gang life, he is forced into a gang initiation, one that causes a tragic accident and results in Paul’s death.
As Helen tries to make sense of what’s happened, she uncovers a tangled mess of secrets and lies – of hidden lives and tangles pasts that bring her into contact with hardened career criminals with too much to lose and gangs of teenagers looking for an easy way out of the council estate. The closer she comes to the truth, the closer she gets to giving birth and the more she has to lose ...
Best known for his DI Tom Thorne series, Billingham’s created this stand-alone novel with a completely different set of characters (although Thorne does make a brief cameo). Helen is an interesting and flawed character and her pregnancy is particularly believable. The guilt that she feels at her affair and the tension it creates between her and Paul is well depicted, as is Paul’s resentment and doubts about the pregnancy and the future of their relationship.
The council estate and Theo’s life is convincing – Theo himself is a similarly flawed character – trying to do the best for his family but believing himself to be short on choices. The dialogue between Theo and the other gang members never feels corny, although it is likely to date as slang moves on.
Where the novel falls down though is in the predictability of the plot. The twist at the end was not a surprise – particularly if you are familiar with Billingham’s other books. This is a shame as it’s a tightly plotted novel that kept me reading one and I would be interested to read about what happens to Helen next.
The Verdict:
A stand-alone novel that’s set in the Tom Thorne universe, this is an interesting novel with a unique central character but the twist is too easy to guess. Nevertheless, I’d like to know more about Helen Weeks and she’s definitely a strong enough character to justify her own series.
