His first three victims ended up dead. His fourth was not so fortunate. . . Alison Willetts is unlucky to be alive. She has survived a stroke, deliberately induced by a skillful manipulation of pressure points on the head and neck. She can see, hear and feel and is aware of everything going on around her, but is completely unable to move or communicate. Her condition is called Locked-In Syndrome. In leaving Alison Willetts alive, the police believe...

The first corpse was found hooded, bound, and naked, kneeling on a bare mattress in a seedy hotel room. This was no ordinary murder but rather the work of a killer driven by something special, something spectacular. The fact that the dead man was a convicted rapist recently released from prison only increases the bizarre nature of the gruesome crime... and the police's reluctance to apprehend the perpetrator. It's the body count that troubles Detective...

Tom Thorne's career is on the skids. Having seriously crossed the line on his last case and depressed over the recent suspicious death of his father, the once ambitious police detective has been reduced to pushing papers... and is being encouraged to take a prolonged leave of duty. But someone is stalking the city's most destitute citizens. Three homeless men have recently been kicked to death, each brutalized corpse discovered with a banknote pinned...

Death Message is the unforgettable new entry in the suspense series featuring Tom Thorne, "the next superstar detective" (Lee Child), from Mark Billingham, one of Britain's most compelling and talented crime writers. Billingham, the author of In the Dark and Buried, delivers a chilling thriller that begins with a body and a phone line, both of which are dead.

After Alan Langford's charred remains were found in his burnt-out Jaguar, his abused, long-suffering wife, Donna, was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced to ten years at Wakefield Prison. It was worth the time. But shortly before her release, Donna receives a nasty shock: an anonymous letter containing a recent photo of her husband-the man she despised and feared, the man she paid to have killed, the man she's now begging London...

Recently demoted for stepping out of line once too often, prickly inspector Tom Thorne is convinced that a spate of suicides among the elderly in South London is something more sinister. When his concerns are dismissed by former colleagues at the CID, and even by his patient girlfriend, Thorne can only trust himself and his best friend-gay pub-crawling pathologist Phil Hendricks-with his suspicions of murder. Thorne draws a chilling connection between...

The astonishing thirteenth Tom Thorne novel is a story of kidnapping, the tabloid press, and a frightening case of mistaken identity. Tom Thorne is on holiday with his girlfriend DS Helen Weeks, when two girls are abducted in Helen's home town. When a body is discovered and a man is arrested, Helen recognizes the suspect's wife as an old school-friend and returns home for the first time in twenty-five years to lend her support. As his partner faces...

"From "one of the most consistently entertaining, insightful crime writers working today" (Gillian Flynn), The Killing Habit again brings together favorite wild-card detective Tom Thorne and straight-laced DI Nicola Tanner on a pair of lethally high-stakes cases. While DI Nicola Tanner investigates the deadly spread of a dangerous new drug, Tom Thorne is handed a case that he doesn't take too seriously, until a spate of animal killings points to the...

"In the summer of 1996, two boys run from a playground into the adjoining woods, but only one comes out. DS Tom Thorne takes on a case that quickly spirals out of control when two people connected with the missing boy are murdered. As London prepares to host the European soccer championships, Thorne fights to keep on top of a baffling investigation while also dealing with the ugly fallout of his broken marriage. A prequel to Billingham's acclaimed...