The Killing Habit (Tom Thorne Novels)

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The unusual premise will hook you, but it’s Billingham’s patience and persuasiveness in unfolding its grim details that will keep you reading long past the hour when all cats are gray. The comparison to the great Swedish police procedurals is an apt one, with the same overworked, intensely human police detectives working their way through crimes that are both heinous and completely believable. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. The only question is how well a novel that is so firmly entrenched in its era will age, but rereading Billingham’s earlier Thorne novels shows that this isn’t a concern.

The Killing Habit (Audio Download): Mark Billingham, Mark

One of the great series of British crime fiction' The Times From multi-million-copy number one bestseller Mark Billingham comes a twisting, unbearably gripping DI Tom Thorne and Nicola Tanner thriller inspired by a dramatic real-life case. If you live in the UK, you’ll most likely have heard of the Croydon Cat Killer, who is believed to have been responsible for the deaths of over 400 animals so far, mainly in London, and who is still on the loose. With Tanner investigating a different killing, he’s pretty much on his own, the butt of an almost unending string of cat jokes. The experienced homicide detective wants to catch this killer, before he graduates from killing cats to people.Here is an author whose works are consistently good, and each one ages like a decent bottle of wine.

The Killing Habit (Tom Thorne, book 15) by Mark Billingham The Killing Habit (Tom Thorne, book 15) by Mark Billingham

Thorne and Tanner’s intertwining investigation of what are two unconnected sets of killings is enthralling.Since butchering animals is, along with wetting the bed and setting fires, one of the classic symptoms of a nascent serial killer, the powers that be are worried that someone is preparing for a more serious spate of felonies. I first got introduced to the works of Mark Billingham when I received the very first book in the Tom Throne series, Sleepyhead, as a birthday gift from my mom. If you are after a series that constant delivers engaging and tightly written crime fiction, you can’t go wrong with these bestselling UK police procedurals. 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 work of a serial killer. The Killing Habit is a harrowing novel about cruelty, deflection and confronting the dangers that are all around us, unaddressed.