Buried by Mark Billingham
The New Tom Thorne Novel, the Sequel to Lifeless
Buried is the latest novel about gritty London detective Tom Thorne, the sixth in a series that started with the chilling Sleepyhead, and occurs six months after Lifeless.
"Six months since he'd worked undercover on the streets of London, trying to catch the man responsible for kicking three of the city's homeless to death. Six months spent writing up domestics, protecting the integrity of evidence chains, and double-checking pre-trial paperwork. Six months kept out of harm's way."
So when Chief Superintendant Jesmond seconds Thorne to the Kidnapping Investigation Unit, Thorne thinks his old bete-noire has lost his mind or is having a joke. But when Thorne learns that the (potential) victim is the son of a recently retired policeman, he realizes that Jesmond has pulled off a master-stroke. If Thorne helps find the victim, Jesmond looks like he's helped. If not, it's Thorne's problem...
Sixteen year old Luke Mullen seems like an average schoolboy, and when the other pupils said that they saw him getting into the car of a glamorous older woman, everyone assumed that he'd won the teenager's equivalent of the Lottery.
But Thorne immediately fastens on the fact that three days went by before the Mullens called in the police, and is soon eyeball-to-eyeball with the retired policeman, who is clearly trying to steer the investigation the way he wants it done.
Within twenty-four hours, their worst fears are confirmed when the kidnappers send a video. It shows a terrified Luke, threatened by a man off-screen who is walking toward him holding a syringe, the image frozen at that point in time.
Thorne is beginning to get the feeling that he's in a race whose rules he doesn't fully understand.
To make matters worse, the case is made even more complex when it seems that there is a tenuous link with a racially-motivated murder committed six months earlier.
It's bad enough that Thorne is haunted by dreams of his father, but his best friend is falling apart emotionally and sleeping on his couch, and Throne's colleague on the team is a very attractive woman. It makes it very hard for Thorne to focus on the case.
To be hyper-critical, DI Tom Thorne is yet another middle-aged copper, a loner bucking against the corporate suits while listening to obscure records that few under forty will have heard of. However Mark Billingham bares enough of a social conscience that even though Buried is not quite up to the standard of the outstanding Lifeless, his new novel still has a much sharper edge than many of Billingham's competitors. Buried almost does that to the careless reader with a tidal wave of police procedural minutea, red herrings and over-plotting that Billingham nonetheless just about manages to carry off.
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