The Burning Girl

Mark Billingham weaves a morbid story of North London gang wars between the Irish Ryan and the Turkish Zarif families, and the horrific aftermath of a decades-old torching. Graeme Malcolm breathes three-dimensional life into the characters by using both syrupy and strident Irish accents, the pure Cockney of internal monologue, and the terrified gibberish of an informant with a hot iron held micrometers above his chest. When DCI Thorne asks his father--"Where would you be if you ordered a stuffed prostitute?"--Malcolm's narration makes the question sound belly-laugh funny, rather than obscene. K.A.T. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

June 6, 2005
The engrossing fourth novel by British TV writer Billingham to feature London police detective Tom Thorne (after 2004's Lazybones
) has a solid, traditional structure and plot, and a whiff of noir sensibility. Thorne is the solid reliable cop whom witnesses trust and colleagues appreciate. Of late, he's taken in his temporarily homeless pal, pathologist Phil Hendricks, and Billingham has fun with this odd couple (Phil is gay, messy and heavily pierced; Thorne is a Lucinda Williams–loving neatnik). Thorne's also willing to help out another friend—prickly, middle-aged ex-DCI Carol Chamberlain—who's uncovered new evidence about a case from the 1980s in which a schoolgirl was set on fire. Moral complexity clouds the picture: the man wrongly imprisoned for that heinous act is a career criminal; empathetic Thorne drifts into an affair with a key witness. A second case, equally complex, involves the murder of a Turkish video store owner, which proves to be just one of an alarming series of killings whose pattern Thorne must determine. Billingham delivers an edgy, ambitious novel with an excellent cast—just as BBC America's Mystery Monday
offers a character-driven alternative to the current spate of forensics-heavy American TV police procedurals—and Morrow's betting on this one, with its hardcover-at-a-paperback-price, to break him out big. Agent, Kim Witherspoon.

March 1, 2006
For those who like their mysteries grim and gritty with touches of gore and sadism, this is just the ticket. Set in North London, Burning Girl is the fourth in a police procedural series featuring Tom Thorne, a country musicloving detective inspector who has enough personal and professional problems to depress anyone. Having to deal with the body count caused by an organized crime turf war and the machinations of a particularly sadistic killer just adds to his load. Someone is trying to take over crime boss Billy Ryan's territory; members of his gang are being killed, one by one, by a very specialized assassin. This multifaceted and loosely woven plot is slow and difficult to get through. Although Billingham forces all the elements to mesh, there is too much going on for the listener to keep it all in balance. The conclusion is unclear and unsatisfying; an unexpected final event makes the already depressive ending even darker. Narrator Graeme Malcolm does a good job with the many foreign and regional accents that are required to keep each member of the complex cast separate. A secondary purchase in libraries where the author's works or police procedurals are popular.Barbara Rhodes, Northeast Texas Lib. Syst., Garland

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