Lifeless - Softcover

Mark Billingham is a stand-up comedian, appearing regularly at the Comedy Store. He has been awarded the 2003 Sherlock Award as the creator of the Best Detective created by a British writer. He has also written drama for children's television, including Knight School which won the Royal Television Society Award for best children's drama.

The fifth Tom Thorne mystery takes a timely turn in focusing on the aftermath of a wartime atrocity, even though Billingham began working on the book in the fall of 2003, "eight months before the publication of certain photographs . . and the scandal surrounding the treatment of Iraqi prisoners." Grim serendipity aside, Lifeless represents a return to form for the author after the mildly disappointing The Burning Girl (2005). Only a few months after his father's death in a suspicious fire, Thorne is living on the London streets. The detective inspector isn't actually homeless, but his career is in real jeopardy as he tracks a man who's kicking "rough sleepers" to death. While Thorne struggles through grief and departmental politics, he befriends a junkie and plumbs the depths of a life untethered. Back at the office, his Serious Crime Group colleagues seek the surviving members of a British tank squadron that murdered Iraqis during the first Gulf War. The gripping plot and a larger-than-normal role for Thorne's best mate, medical examiner Phil Hendricks, turn this procedural into a moody, brooding treat. Frank Sennett
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