The feeling of particular places is well captured and anybody who knows the capital will probably enjoy matching the descriptions to their own experience of the city.ĭuring the course of Sleepyhead Thorne investigates a series of murders in which the victim is killed by somebody skilfully applying pressure to their arteries in order to cause a stroke. There is also another rather important character in the novel: London. Despite the fact that they are all rather 'of a type', they have enough individuality to produce a good framework for the main story. These characters re-appear in the novels following this one and Sleepyhead does a good job of introducing them. The best friend is a gay Mancunian pathologist called Hendricks - one of the best creations of the book overall. Thorne has a sidekick in the person of Dave Holland, a young policeman torn between following a safe course of career and doing something worthwhile. In a post-modernist way he's rather aware of the fact that he is a typical crime-novel figure but seems happy enough with it. He's divorced listens to country music and an occasional trance piece, likes his beer and wine but doesn't smoke or drink spirits. He reminds me of Rankin's Rebus which is not necessarily a bad thing but doesn't make Thorne a particularly original invention.
Thorne is one of your typical fictional detectives: a hardened but sensitive copper, pig headed, stubborn and generally very good at what he's doing and rather bad at getting on with his superiors and some of his peers. I have enjoyed the novel, but I think that it had a lot of faults of the typical debut - I have now read the other instalments of the series and there are better ones out there, my favourite being Scaredy Cat (this was one that really scared me and it's not an easy feat for a pop-book!). It was Mark Billingham's debut as a crime writer and was received very well. Sleepyhead is a serial-killer novel, set in the contemporary London and featuring DI Tom Thorne as the main character.
Borrow definitely, buy only if you are a comitted Billingham fan. Summary: A police procedural with some great chracters and a good killer with a very inventive modus operandi, but too easy to guess formulaic detective but vivid description of London the style stumbles and some parts could have been edited out.
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