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Billingham's Tom Thorne series has been built around the monster-slayer metanarrative of the late 20th century, yet he's a skillful enough writer that he has managed to satisfy readers who are sick of serial killers. The usual challenge gifted genre writers face - to honor well-established expectations while providing something fresh and new - is ratcheted up when the central conceit is so shopworn and prone to franchised and mechanical violence. But with BLOODLINE, Billingham has once again made a good job of a tired trope. In this story, Thorne has a homicide with two strange features: the murdered woman has a bit of x-ray film clutched in her hand and, as the police dig deeper, an unfortunate past; her mother was the victim of a notorious serial killer. He can't be responsible for Thorne's victim, though – he died three years earlier in prison. "Just one of those freaky things," a colleague remarks, but of course there is a pattern here. Luckily, Billingham doesn't draw a map of that pattern that relies on the plotlines leading into territory labeled "here there be monsters." The relationship between the imprisoned killer and the man he has inspired turns out to be blessedly free of mad geniuses or aesthetes with a taste for viciousness. Thorne and his partner Louise are dealing with their own difficulties. As the book opens, Louise has just learned her pregnancy is ending in miscarriage and both of them are devastated in their own way. Working out how he feels about the loss and about his future with Louise is a major thread that is braided throughout the story. BLOODLINE may promise thrills, but it really is an exploration of the formation of families, the need we have for connection, and the burdens it places on us. Both Thorne and the killer he pursues are working out those burdens, as are other characters in the book (most memorably a mother and child who provide bookends for the action). What makes this mystery more than a "serial killer with a twist" is its solid grounding in three-dimensional characters, a well-realized procedural setting, and pacing that doesn't depend on artificial adrenaline boosters. It's a very good story, even with serial killers. § Barbara Fister is an academic librarian, columnist, and author of the Anni Koskinen mystery series.
Reviewed by Barbara Fister, July 2011
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