From the Dead

November 11, 2013
At the outset of Billingham’s engrossing ninth novel featuring Det. Insp. Tom Thorne (after 2011’s Bloodline), an unnamed man stages his own death, allowing him to escape from England; his former wife is convicted of conspiring to murder him. Ten years later, that wife, Donna Langford, is out of prison, insisting on her innocence, a claim bolstered by her having recently received a photo showing her husband, Alan Langford, in a place that looks like Spain, apparently “back from the dead.” Donna engages Anna Carpenter, an inexperienced and ill-equipped PI, who turns for help to Thorne, though the London cop happens to be consumed by the trial of a man accused of murdering an 18-year-old girl whose body was never found. While the incessant banter between Thorne and his colleagues can be distracting and the murder trial gets somewhat lost in the shuffle, a chillingly clever criminal boosts this intelligent procedural. Agent: Anna Steadman, Lutyens & Rubinstein Literary Agency (U.K.).

Paul Thornley narrates Billingham's ninth Tom Thorne police procedural with excellent pacing and characterizations. Thornley's bevy of cop voices is tough and on target. Even better are his female characters, such as ex-con Dawn (recently released from a term for her husband's murder) and her hardened prison lover. They contrast nicely with the soft-spoken novice private detective whom they hire to track the husband, who faked his own death. There's also a criminal gang on permanent vacation in Spain--or so they believe. The Brit accents are much better than the mostly missing Spanish ones. And the action scenes, from opening to closing murders, are well paced, as is the ongoing hunt for evidence. D.P.D. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine