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RATING: |
Date of Release: June 2003 |
Publisher: Penguin / Warner |
Review Source: |
Detective Inspector Tom Thorne has the job of watching out for patterns and thinks he spots one - two similar killings on the same day; women followed from a mainline station and then strangled. Rapidly, though, it becomes clear that the methods differed in all sorts of ways - one killing was controlled, the other frenzied - and the timings do not work out. On a hunch, Thorne checks for other such pairings and finds them - this time two killers are working as a team, one setting the other challenges.
We know what Thorne does not, that all of this has to do with things that happened at school years ago; we also know a lot more than Thorne about the demons that drive some of his own investigating team.
Billingham sets himself some complicated technical challenges here - flashes back and forwards, and closeups of killers' minds that keep crucial information from us - and some of the complications don't quite work. Overall, though, this is a terrifying exploration of brutal madness, made all the more so by touches of compassion for the killer's victims...
A strange novel, well worth the read.
