Mark Billingham

Mark Billingham was born and brought up in Birmingham. He worked for some years as an actor and as a stand-up comedian. His first crime novel, Sleepyhead, was published in 2001. Apart from the London-based Tom Thorne series, which have been adapted for TV, Mark is also the author of two standalone novels, as well as a series of children’s thrillers, Triskellion, written under the pseudonym Will Peterson. Mark lives in London with his wife and two children.

Books by Mark Billingham

Rabbit Hole

There’s no shortage of suspects when a death occurs on an acute psychiatric ward, but luckily DC Alice Armitage is there to investigate. The only problem is that Alice is a patient there herself.

Reviewed on 29 April 2023 by Linda Wilson

Cry Baby

A seven-year-old boy has gone missing while playing with a friend in a wood next to a park, with his mother nearby. A police officer is determined not to have another child’s death on his conscience.

Reviewed on 22 August 2020 by Linda Wilson

Love Like Blood

The usually strait-laced DI Nicola Tanner teams up with archetypal maverick DI Tom Thorne to investigate a series of killings.

Reviewed on 10 June 2017 by Linda Wilson

Die of Shame

When a member of a therapy group is murdered, DI Nicola Tanner finds the resulting wall of silence hard to penetrate.

Reviewed on 17 September 2016 by Linda Wilson

Time of Death

Two children are missing from Polesford and hopes of finding them alive are rapidly fading.

Reviewed on 25 June 2016 by Linda Wilson

The Bones Beneath

Tom Thorne, newly reinstated to the murder squad, gets landed with a job that he really doesn’t want: accompanying psychopathic murderer Stuart Nicklin to a remote island off the Welsh Coast to look for the body of his first victim.

Reviewed on 12 July 2014 by Linda Wilson

The Dying Hours

Tom Thorne, now busted back into uniform, is convinced that there’s more to a cluster of deaths among the elderly than simply suicides. But he’s the only one who wants to investigate further.

Reviewed on 20 September 2013 by Linda Wilson