Love Like Blood (Tom Thorne Series #14)

by Mark Billingham

Overview

When a murder strikes near to the heart for DI Nicola Tanner, she enlists Tom Thorne’s help in the latest thriller from “one of the best crime novelists working today” (Laura Lippman).

Internationally bestselling author Mark Billingham's riveting new novel Love Like Blood marks the return of series character Tom Thorne, "the next superstar detective" (Lee Child), as he pairs up with perfectionist detective inspector Nicola Tanner of Die of Shame on an investigation that ventures into politically sensitive territory.

DI Nicola Tanner needs Tom Thorne's help. Her partner, Susan, has been brutally murdered and Tanner is convinced that it was a case of mistaken identity―that she was the real target. The murderer's motive might have something to do with Tanner's recent work on a string of cold-case honor killings she believes to be related. Tanner is now on compassionate leave but insists on pursuing the case off the books and knows Thorne is just the man to jump into the fire with her. He agrees but quickly finds that working in such controversial territory is dangerous in more ways than one. And when a young couple goes missing, they have a chance to investigate a case that is anything but cold.

Racing towards a twist-filled ending, Love Like Blood is another feat of masterful plotting from one of Britain's top crime novelists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802127860
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	06/19/2018
Series:	DI Tom Thorne Series , #14
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	625,330
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Mark Billingham has twice won the Theakston Old Peculier Award for Best Crime Novel and also won the Sherlock Award for "Best Detective Created by a British Author." His books, which include the critically acclaimed Tom Thorne series, have been translated into twenty-five languages and have sold over five million copies. He lives in London.

Read an Excerpt

They moved out of the shadows and across the road as the woman turned on to her front path. Quickly, but not too quickly, trying to time it right; heads down and hooded, ready to turn and walk casually away should anyone come along. A dog walker, a nosy neighbor. Emerging from between cars, they were coming through the gate as the woman pushed in her door key and one of them was calling out her name as she bent to pick up her bags from the step.

They had the water pistols out by the time she turned round.

She opened her mouth, but the words, the scream, were quickly silenced by the twin jets of bleach and a few seconds after she staggered back, blinded, and fell into her house, they were on her.

Inside.

The water pistols were shoved back into pockets and the bags that had been dropped just over the threshold were kicked aside, so that the door could be shut. Folders and files spilled out on to the hall carpet, a bottle of orange juice, a notebook, pens. They stood and watched as the woman spluttered and kicked out at them, inching herself across the floor towards the foot of the stairs.

"Where does she think she's going?"

"She's not going anywhere."

Interviews

Mark Billingham has twice won the Theakstons Old Peculier Award for Best Crime Novel and also won the Sherlock Award for "Best Detective Created by a British Author." His books, which include the critically acclaimed Tom Thorne series, have been translated into twenty-five languages and have sold over five million copies. He lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Love Like Blood:

#5 Sunday Times bestseller in the UK

"A novel that probes the phenomenon of honor killings and casts doubt on the work of the Metropolitan Police's Honor Crimes Unit."—New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice

"Brilliant."—Independent (UK)

"Honor-based violence is a scourge in Britain, where the Crown Prosecution Service estimates that the 12 or so honor killings reported each year are only a fraction of the true number committed . . . In Love Like Blood, Mark Billingham puts human faces on one such case . . . Although 'dishonored' male relatives are prime suspects in most cases of punitive violence, squeamish families often prefer to shop the job to a middleman with access to professional hit men'thugs like Muldoon and Riaz, who collaborate efficiently but whose cultural clashes can be morbidly funny."—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

—Love Like Blood moves quickly and skillfully with reliably readable prose . . . In each chapter, Billingham adeptly unspools a new thread, a new twist, which pushes the reader onward into the story, as he deftly manages an expansive plot without slowing down the momentum of the characters or the story."—Mystery Scene

—Love Like Blood hums along on all six cylinders. Billingham has always been a smart writer, one who delves into the nooks and crannies of the police procedural genre where others don't think of going, and once again he takes the genre to new heights here with its clever murder hypothesis that is as current as today's headlines . . . Billingham doesn't get near the recognition in the United States that he has earned and deserves. Hopefully Love Like Blood will change that."—Joe Hartlaub, Bookreporter

“Gripping . . . A mighty fine police procedural, and it’s a pleasure, as always, to watch Tom sift through clues and intentional misdirection along the journey to find his perps. And in keeping with the time-honored tradition, there is a final-chapter surprise to keep you on your toes.”—Bruce Tierney, BookPage

—Billingham does justice to a subject that could be handled badly during an era of rampant Islamophobia, never climbing on a soap box but treating the topic with the shades of complexity and ethical clarity it deserves. He has traded the theatrical serial-killer-with-a-difference plotlines of the first entries in this series for a more thoughtful if less frantically paced engagement with violence and its social vectors. But he keeps a few surprises up his sleeve."—Barbara Fister, Reviewing the Evidence

"Shocking and topical . . . Billingham has few equals in moulding convincing characters and his finest creation Thorne is in top form . . . An engaging thriller from one of Britain's best crime writers."—Daily Express (UK)

"Billingham's ground-breaking novel Love Like Blood . . . confronts the phenomenon of 'honour'-based killings . . . A gripping, unsensational take on a type of crime that is happening more frequently than many of us realise."—Sunday Times (UK)

"Mark Billingham's . . . crime novels don't shy away from being pitch-black as well as witty. Love Like Blood features the welcome return of Billingham's astute and empathetic London-based detective Tom Thorne."—Daneet Steffens, Seattle Review of Books

"Billingham's skillful plotting is everywhere in evidence here, and Thorne remains a compelling character, comparable to Connelly's Bosch and Rankin's Rebus."—Booklist

"Irascible, irritating and indefatigable, DI Tom Thorne has earned his place in the pantheon of fine fictional policemen, alongside those legendary inspectors Morse and Rebus . . . Billingham's passionate depiction of the injustice and brutality that flow from these killings spills from every page, making this one of his most powerful crime novels, written with a fury that does both him and Thorne justice."—Daily Mail (UK)

"This sensitive topic is delicately handled, with a perfectly executed and thoroughly unnerving twist at the end."—Guardian (UK)

“Chilling and moving. Tom Thorne is on terrific form.”—Times (UK)
“Fueled by Thorne’s dry wit and some neat twists . . . the book builds to a good, tense ending.”—Deadly Pleasures, Rating: A


"Entertaining . . . One perfectly executed twist at the end will leave [readers] eagerly awaiting the next in this series."—Publishers Weekly

"Very few will predict the unnerving coda . . . A new and urgent spin on his tried-and-true procedural formula."—Kirkus Reviews

"A gripping and genuinely tragic story."—Literary Review (UK)

From the Publisher

04/17/2017
Billingham’s entertaining 14th Tom Thorne novel (after 2015’s Time of Death) teams the formerly rule-bending London detective inspector, who’s fighting middle age and an expanding waistline, with Det. Insp. Nicola Tanner, introduced in 2016’s standalone, Die of Shame. When Tanner’s life partner, Susan Best, is murdered outside the couple’s home after a shopping trip, the by-the-book Tanner believes that she, not Susan, was the intended victim, retaliation for her investigation of a series of honor killings in London’s Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh communities. Skeptical at first, Thorne agrees to help Tanner when a young Bangladeshi couple disappears, and Thorne suspects that the honor killings may be linked to a cold case from his past. Readers may wish for more tension from the contrasting styles of the two well-drawn leads, or that the main plot could offer more surprises, but one perfectly executed twist at the end will leave them eagerly awaiting the next in this series. Agent: David Forrer, Inkwell Management. (June)

Publishers Weekly

★ 05/15/2017
London DI Tom Thorne (Time of Death) returns for another absorbing installment in Billingham's gripping police procedural series. Fellow officer Nicola Tanner (Die of Shame) returns, too, as she needs Thorne's contrarian intelligence to help solve a crime. Tanner is on compassionate leave: her partner was brutally murdered in their home, but Tanner believes that she was the actual target. She had recently been investigating links between two contract killers and possible honor killings in the local Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh communities, and is convinced that she was supposed to be the next victim. Her superior officers are skeptical, so she and Thorne pursue their own inquiries. Tensions are high, and when two young people go missing in what looks suspiciously like another honor killing, the stakes are raised substantially. Billingham brings the book to its conclusion with a stunning, surprising twist. VERDICT Superior writing, credible dialog, and creative plotting drive this deftly crafted crime novel. If you haven't encountered DI Tom Thorne yet, this would be an ideal introduction. [See Prepub Alert, 1/8/17; library marketing.]—Penelope J.M. Klein, Fayetteville, NY

Library Journal

Mark Billingham ably narrates the fourteenth book in his series featuring London-based police detective Tom Thorne. It can be unwise for authors to narrate their own work, but Billingham is an exception. He demonstrates that he knows his own shortcomings by using two British Indian actors to voice members of the Asian community in a story involving so-called honor killings. On the whole this works, though there is the occasional clunky line. Avita Jay's reading of the diary entries of a young woman who is being pressured by her father and brother to conform conveys exactly her defiance and desperation. Billingham avoids gratuitous descriptions of violence, keeping the focus on the strong plot of this solid police procedural. C.A.T. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

2017-04-17
DI Tom Thorne steps on more toes than usual to help out Nicola Tanner, a detective who's supposed to stay even further away from the case at hand than he is.Since Susan Best was nothing more than an inoffensive grade school teacher, Tanner is convinced the two men who squirted bleach into her eyes and stabbed her to death mistook her for Tanner herself, who was the dead woman's flat mate and lover. DCI Russell Brigstocke quite properly refuses to let Tanner work the case, so Tanner asks Thorne to take time out from his million other jobs (Time of Death, 2015, etc.) to look into the matter most likely to have made her new enemies: her work with the Honour Crimes Unit, which investigates the murders of young women whose Westernized behavior might have brought shame to their families. The HCU has focused lately on cold cases, but a hot one obligingly turns up: the murder of Amaya Shah, a Barnet College student found with her missing boyfriend's semen inside her. The activist Asian-English members of the Anti Hate Crime Alliance, Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus alike, bay for the blood of Kamal Azim, but the revelation that the missing boyfriend is actually gay persuades Thorne that the guilt lies elsewhere—perhaps within the ranks of the AHCA itself. To a case that cries out for tact, delicacy, and cross-cultural sensitivity, Thorne brings bulldog tenacity, a gift for reading people, and a determination to devote his every waking moment to its solution, especially after a second attack leaves Tanner's flat in flames. Most readers won't be surprised by the resolution, but very few will predict the unnerving coda. His emphasis on the thorny issues surrounding honor killings allows Billingham (Die of Shame, 2016, etc.) to put a new and urgent spin on his tried-and-true procedural formula.

Kirkus Reviews