Finished Th 11/20/14
I learned of the author because I streamed the film, SLEEPYHEAD which was based on his debut novel.
Both feature Detective Inspector Tom Thorne who is a jaded and cynical London police officer. Divorced and lives alone with a cat named Elvis.
In this novel someone is murdering released sex offenders. The three men are found naked and strangled with blue rope. The men have also been raped annaly.
After the first murder a woman calls the crime scene and claims that she owns a flower shop and was asked to deliver flowers to this number. Tom takes the call and develops a relationship with this woman.
WHAT HAPPENED?
A man's wife is raped and she goes to court and the system makes it appear that she was somehow responsible for the act. Her husband grows to believe the hype, kills her, and then hangs himself. His two children wind up in foster care and lost in the system. Later they strangle the man responsible for the rape (he got off for the crime), but this crime ends up as a 'cold case'. And later target recent rape releases from prison, and these are the crimes that the focus of the novel. The brother has a film company and got access to recent prison releases when he got a contract to make a film about the prison system. The secret is not revealed until the very end, but the brother and sister team capture Tom Thorne, and he is almost killed in the same manner. One of Tom's cop friends goes to visit the woman who had the children in foster care, and she shows him a picture and he recognizes that the children are really the flower owner and her roommate's lover. He arrives at Tom's house just as Eve and Ben are about to murder Tom.
Eve Bloom and Ben Jameson are the brother and sister. Eve rooms with Denise and Denise's boyfriend is Ben.
A fine novel and I'm looking forward to reading more by Billingham.
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