Time of Death (Tom Thorne Novels)

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Detectives Tom Thorne and Helen Weeks are on holiday in the Cotswolds, more than ready for a good break and enjoying the chance to learn to know each other even more deeply, away from the stresses of the busy London incident room. Now the unspoken rule with crime books is that the author can't just pluck the guilty party out of thin air at the end of the book, the reader must have met the guilty party during the narrative, and using this logic I figured I sussed it all out by the mid-way point. There is also suspense because the reader knows the second girl is still alive - will Thorne get to get before she too is finished off?

But their peace is shattered when they learn that two girls have been abducted in the Warwickshire village of Polesford and a local man has been arrested, refusing to reveal their whereabouts. The investigation into the abduction of the missing girls is a fascinating story which contains its fair share of surprises, made all the more shocking by the fact that we witness events through the eyes of outsiders Thorne and Weeks. It's at this point that you can stand back and see where the author led you on a merry dance - and in this book, Mr Billingham dances so well. But the thing that annoyed me more, especially after Billingham mocking the maverick cop cliché himself, was that Helen and Tom suddenly turned into violent criminals halfway through - beating up a teenager in front of his friends (who fortunately seemed to be the only teenagers in Britain without smartphones to film it on) for the heinous crime of spitting, with no repercussions.

Linda and her children are put through hell on earth and it’s this which takes the novel into more unusual territory. Tom tags along and unofficially begins to investigate to the distinct displeasure of the man in charge of the case. This series is going from strength to strength and already I am looking forward to the next instalment. Hint for all the brutal and corrupt fictional police officers out there – take your victim up a dark alley, alone, and check there are no CCTV cameras around.

It's interesting to see the story from the perspective of the family of the accused, although they're all so unlikeable I couldn't develop much sympathy for them.There is still an extremely clever and killer on the loose and a missing girl who Thorne believes might still be alive.