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THE BURNING GIRL
by Mark Billingham
Little, Brown, July 2004
368 pages
12.99GBP
ISBN: 0316725749


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Award-winning author Mark Billingham's fourth novel featuring DI Tom Thorne inter-weaves the investigation of a series of brutal gangland killings with an enquiry into an earlier petrol attack on a schoolgirl, the burning girl of the title, re-opened at the request of Thorne's friend, former DI Carol Chamberlain. The unknown gangland assassin is nicknamed the X-man because of the wounds he inflicts on his victim's backs before he kills them; the self-confessed petrol attacker, Gordon Rooker, is coming to the end of 20 years in prison and hoping for release.

However, doubt is cast on Rooker's guilt when Chamberlain receives phone calls from someone else claiming to be the attacker. The cases come together because the intended victim (Rooker apparently set fire to the wrong girl) was the daughter of one gangland boss and then married his rival, Billy Ryan. It is members of Ryan's gang who are now the victims of the X-man's attacks.

With me so far? This complicated story is well told in the opening chapters through a number of flashbacks and different perspectives in which Billingham establishes a number of characters and scenarios. For two-thirds of the novel this is plausible and often gripping. However, for me the plots and sub-plots become too complicated and the last third of the story, which sees Thorne become even more emotionally and psychologically damaged, is less than convincing and ultimately a little disappointing.

There are too many echoes of now established stereotypes of the genre in this book: the lonely hero in conflict with his superiors/rivals at work, sharing his home with a cat (and temporarily also with a pathologist), attached to a battered car, and with a taste in Country n' Western music described in some detail. There's also an aged parent, suffering from Alzheimer's to remind us that Thorne is human, and to add to his sense of guilt.

Thorne, of course, breaks all the rules, sleeping with a witness and then, together with Chamberlain, resorts to torture to crack the case. At that point I felt Billingham had lost the plot or needed a speedy end. Perhaps it is just the taste in music, but give me John Harvey's Resnick every time for more believable and more emotionally powerful story lines! Devotees of Thorne will undoubtedly disagree and find this a further development of their hero.

Reviewed by Neil Wynn, July 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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