Sleepyhead (Tom Thorne Novels Book 1)

Product Information

Mark Billingham Is an English novelist whose series of Tom Thorne are the best selling in the genre of Crime Novels. He lives in North London together with his wife and children. Billingham is also a television screenwriter and has become famous as a comic and an actor. Scaredy Cat (Little, Brown & Company, July 2002), ISBN 0-316-85954-0; Time Warner UK, November 2002, ISBN 0-356-23206-9; William Morrow US, June 2003, ISBN 0-06-621300-2 Mark Billingham turned his hand into writing comedy scripts for TV, as well as continued to act and appear in front of the camera in various occasions. Generally, he is a self confessed fan of crime fiction and a very serious collector. Other contributors include: Laura Lippman • Lee Child • John Connolly • Lynda La Plante • John Harvey • Peter Robinson • Fidelis Morgan • Val McDermid • Karin Slaughter• Emma Donoghue• Denise Mina • Kelley Armstrong • Jane Haddam There is a great use of images to encapsulate a person. I defy anyone not to have a picture of this man in your head.

After graduating with a degree in drama from the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts, he helped form a socialist theatre company, Bread & Circuses, in Birmingham. Bread & Circuses toured with shows in schools, colleges, arts centres and the street. [3] In the mid-1980s he moved to London as a "jobbing actor", taking minor roles in episodes of TV shows Dempsey and Makepeace, Juliet Bravo, Boon, and The Bill. [2] [4] After playing a variety of "bad guy roles such as a soccer hooligan, drug addict, a nasty copper, a racist copper or a bent copper", he claimed that he had become disenchanted with acting and that the emphasis was not on talent, but on looks. [3]I don't usually write spoilers but to be honest this book was that bad it was spoilt when it was written. This is probably the worst book I have managed to have the patience to read through. You] worry that you will be entering that world of the strange cliche-ed cop, but you soon realise that you have to get comfortable in that world. You think "Hang on, some of the clichés are part of that territory". It would like writing a Western and going "Oh no I've given him a horse! What a terrible cliché!" It's not a cliché – It's part and parcel of the genre – cowboys have six-guns, horses and stetsons and detectives have [a] past... problems [and] flaws, because if they don't, then there is nothing to read about. [3] The central character has continuously featured in the vast majority of his works except in the novels titled in The Dark and Rush of Blood. It his novel sleepyhead, Billingham writes that if the writers want their readers to care about the character, the first thing they should do is to care themselves, and as such he has imbued Thorne with a lot of his personal characteristics. a b "Nominations for Theakston's Crime Novel of the year Award 2009". digyorkshire.com. 2 June 2009 . Retrieved 17 June 2009. Sleepyhead seems to suffer from some fairly typical debut problems: the main character is definitely still finding his voice, and the novel could do with a bit of editing.

The hook (which may have caught the eye of American TV creators, if the first-ever episode of CSI: New York a few years later is anything to go by) and the well-crafted, twisting plotline would have alone been enough to get Billingham deserved notice. A body is discovered in London, near a train station. Always a good beginning for a murder mystery. But then another one is discovered, It takes Thorne a bit to realize that there is not one killer, but two. And these two commits crimes at the same time.Thorne has a 'skeleton' in his past relating to a case from 15 years before; this experience haunts him and to some extent explains why he behaves the way he does. The story is frequently hinted at and mentioned and eventually told in detail in one of the chapters. To me it's something that I would be happier to see as staying vague - it has no actual bearing on the current case except as an influence on Thorne and certainly its inclusion does not improve the construction. Maybe you imagine a thug, a bruiser. Well, the reason this man got into so many fights was because, as we find out in the next paragraph, his voice was a high-pitched squeak. Or as Billingham more memorably adds Sweeting, Adam (11 October 2010). "Single Father, BBC One / Thorne: Sleepyhead, Sky1". The Arts Desk . Retrieved 14 February 2017. The Burning Girl (Little, Brown & Company, July 2004), ISBN 0-316-72574-9; William Morrow US (June 2005), ISBN 0-06-074526-6

Mmmm, I feel very torn with this review and I will tell you why. Having never read any of the Thorne series of books by Mark Billingham, I decided to make a marathon catch up session and start with his debut novel Sleepyhead (released in 2001). The synopsis sounded pretty amazing and I started the book with anticipation. The reason I say I am torn is because I have really conflicting emotions. The story, writing and plot was flipping amazing and it took me no time to devour the book. On the other hand I am still undecided about how I feel about Tom Thorne.

Writing

From an early age, Billingham wrote often "funny" stories for popularity and enjoyment. As his interests moved towards crime fiction, he set an early novel (the unpublished The Mechanic) in his native Birmingham. Inspired by the comic-crime work of Carl Hiaasen and other authors, he attempted to use his experience as a stand-up comedian and crime fan to write a similarly comic novel. [2] Ultimately he abandoned the unfinished novel and the comic-crime genre to focus on another book that would become Sleepyhead. Dancing Towards The Blade" in Men From Boys by John Harvey (ed.) ( Arrow Books, September 2004), ISBN 0-09-946152-8 Thorne himself is your pretty standard damaged central character tormented by a past case that clouds his current obsession to solve his latest investigation. One of the killers is caught after a failed attempt on the life of the son of another victim. He confesses to his crimes, but refuses to identify his partner. Thorne decides to free him in an attempt to force the other killer to come forward. In 2002, he was "in the middle of writing a screenplay for an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and about to write a screenplay for a cult children's show," a sci-fi drama for the BBC, but turned to writing novels. [3] [9] Novels [ edit ]

This was a clever concept and it works up to a point but it is Alison’s voice with which I had a bit of a problem. Though she was witty and character-filled, courageous and moving, it did not convince as a girl’s voice. And that was not because of the gutter-nature of quite a lot of her musings. Her language was certainly much more earthy and raunchy then any of Jane Austen’s girls but this is the 21st Century so that would often be the norm; No, it was her use of certain phrases that jarred. On the other hand the 'why' and 'who' of the killer were a bit of a downer: I almost never can guess who the culprit is in murder mysteries, but in this case I did with no particular problems and quite early on. I am not saying it's a major disadvantage, as you never really know till the end and there was still some excitement in finding out, but readers who prefer their crime mysteries to stay mysterious till the final unravelling might find it a problem. Billingham's novel Lazybones won the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award 2004 and he won the same award in 2009 for his novel Death Message. [10] In The Dark was nominated for the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger at the 2009 Crime Thriller Awards. [18] In 2011, Billingham was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame. Dennis Bethell’s voice could start a fight at a hundred yards. It was a spilt pint waiting to happen”

There are moments of genuine poignancy. I think in particular of some of the dialogue between Thorne and his junior, Holland or again the encounter between Holland,( incidentally a character I felt was a great creation but severely underused, maybe he comes more into his own in future books)and Maggie Byrne. This showed real sensitivity in the writing and added another strata to the novel which took it beyond mere blood and guts and began to move me to forgive Billingham for creating such a cliché ridden hero. This is the first book featuring D I Tom Thorne. When Alison Willetts is found in a deliberately induced coma, it seems that her survival is not the mistake. The mistake was the three young women previously found dead and Alison's case the first the killer got right. Thorne must investigate and soon finds himself involved with Alison's doctor, Anne Coburn, despite the fact that one of her closest and oldest friends is his prime suspct. When Thorne, helped by the neurologist looking after Alison, starts to realise what he is up against he knows the case is not going to be solved by normal methods - before he can find out who did it he has to understand why he's doing it. Mark Billingham's Newsletter". December 2012. Archived from the original on 16 February 2013 . Retrieved 21 May 2013. The problems I had related mostly to a stumbling writing style, especially in the sections written from Thorne's perspective; the construction of the novel could also be improved by removal of some of the scenes. Despite its faults it was certainly a promising debut and I have to say that the next instalment of DI Thorne's story Scaredy Cat was significantly improved.