Product Description

To his friends, his foes and even to himself it looks as though Tom Thorne's career is on the skids. On his last case he had seriously over-stepped the mark, and now gardening leave has been suggested and all he has to tend is a window box. So when it appears someone is targeting London's homeless community it seems pefectly natural for Thorne to take a step nearer to the gutter and go undercover amongst them. He blends into the sometimes invisble community easily - too easily perhaps - but the information he gleans quickly proves that this is no random killer, it is someone with a very distinct purpose and a very specific list of victims, only the team supporting Thorne from the outside don't have the key to motive or identity. Then somehow the fact that a policeman is working under cover becomes public knowledge ...With acute observation of character and place, combined with his acknowledged mastery of plotting, LIFELESS raises the Thorne series to an even higher level.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7285 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Lifeless, Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne reaches something like the nadir of his police career, broken by the death--possibly the murder--of his demented father and shuffled off to a desk job of infinite tedium. When someone starts kicking the London homeless to death, he suggests going undercover, and those of his friends who care about him worry that he is looking for his own destruction as much as for the killer. Certainly Thorne finds compensations on the street for danger, cold, hunger and squalor--his friendship with two young addicts is nonetheless real for his deceit and their pragmatic ruthlessness. Yet the secret of the deaths he is investigating lies only partly in London's dark alleys and corners; it lies as well fourteen years in the past on the road to Baghdad... This is probably Billingham's best thriller yet--inventive and passionate and full of commitment and dark humour. In his vulnerability and shrewdness, Tom Thorne is gradually shaping up into a classic detective whose habit of breaking the rules is not so much a strength as part of a pattern of self-destructive behaviour. Billingham's writing gets better with each book, too--the rough tenderness for each other of Spike and Caz, Thorne's mildly deranged guides to the street, is delicate and moving. ---Roz Kaveney

Review
'Complex, thought-provoking and, in parts, very funny ... a tour de force' OBSERVER 'Murder and mystery do not come better than this.' WHAT'S ON IN LONDON 'Assured and shocking thriller.' GUARDIAN 'A cunning variation on the serial-murder theme.' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Scary, pell-mell, cliff-hanging thriller.' LITERARY REVIEW 'Well worth reading.' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'This is a self-assured and thought-provoking thriller.' DAILY EXPRESS 'LIFELESS is a cracking read.' IRISH EXAMINER 'The structure of LIFELESS allows Billingham to take both his protagonist and the reader into a truly dark universe.' CRIME TIME 'Billingham's prose is as masterfully constructed as one of his routines, cannily obscuring revelations to ensure maximum effect,' GQ 'A great book.' LADS MAG 'The fifth in the DI Tom Thorne series is the best yet and a riveting, if unsettling, holiday read.' ARENA 'In Lifeless, Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne reaches something like the nadir of his police career, broken by the death--possibly the murder--of his demented father and shuffled off to a desk job of infinite tedium. When someone starts kicking the London homeless to death, he suggests going undercover, and those of his friends who care about him worry that he is looking for his own destruction as much as for the killer. Certainly Thorne finds compensations on the street for danger, cold, hunger and squalor--his friendship with two young addicts is nonetheless real for his deceit and their pragmatic ruthlessness. Yet the secret of the deaths he is investigating lies only partly in London's dark alleys and corners; it lies as well fourteen years in the past on the road to Baghdad... This is probably Billingham's best thriller yet--inventive and passionate and full of commitment and dark humour. In his vulnerability and shrewdness, Tom Thorne is gradually shaping up into a classic detective whose habit of breaking the rules is not so much a strength as part of a pattern of self-destructive behaviour. Billingham's writing gets better with each book, too--the rough tenderness for each other of Spike and Caz, Thorne's mildly deranged guides to the street, is delicate and moving.' - Roz Kaveney, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW

Express
`a self-assured and thought-provoking thriller'

Customer Reviews

Lifeless, Mark Billingham
Someone's killing homeless people. That's the basic thrust of Billingham's new novel, his fifth to feature DI Thorne. Thorne himself has been shunted aside, a bit out of favour with his bosses and still getting over the death of his elderly father, which he will never be certain wasn't murder. He's most definitely "having a rest" - until, eager to be in the thick of the action, he volunteers to go undercover out onto the streets of London, posing as one of the many homeless, to try and garner vital information about the killings which show no signs of stopping. Understandable, much is made of the perhaps precarious nature of Thorne's mental wellbeing, especially as he throws himself into his mission with such gusto and, well, enthusiasm. (The fact is, it's probably quite good for him, I think.)

I'm undergoing somewhat of a disaffect with serial killer novels right now, so I wasn't too sure about this book, especially after The Burning Girl, which veered away from that sub-genre completely, and broke entirely new and refreshing ground for the series. The fact is that if Billingham sticks with serial killers then he's never going to better his first book (and so far, he hasn't - but his last came close). I was pleased, then, that this book, despite its initial conceit of strings of homeless people being killed, steers away that, and is ultimately better for it. (Though, I suspect, the exposited motivation for some of the killings is less accurate than the simple fact Billingham had to have them in order to maintain a selling point, an original angle.) Lifeless is a clever, topical, intelligent crime novel, another point on Billingham's arc of growing maturity that started with Lazybones.

One of the central problems I have personally with Billingham's series is Tom Thorne. While I like him, and I concede (quite willingly) that the psychological development of the character through recent books - and through this one in particular - is fascinating and excellently wrought on Billingham's part, he is nothing new or special, he is nothing that we haven't seen so, so many times before (and, to be honest, better). He doesn't extend the constant pull of interest that some other detectives do, purely because I don't feel that there's anything new in him: he seems almost to be a likeable composite of so many other detectives. I never anticipate Billingham's book because of the protagonist, as I do with Rankin or Mankell. Fortunately, Billingham's plots are usually enough to keep me riveted anyway.

Aside from the journey Thorne's character seems to be on, the real triumph of this novel is Billingham's portrait of the immense landscape of homelessness. It's superbly done. The general atmosphere, and the characters involved (particularly the young couple Spike and Caroline whom Thorne befriends) are written brilliantly, touching yet not sentimental, always emptily sad. It's never less than clear that this environment is harsh and dangerous, Thorne somewhat crazy for so willingly immersing himself in it.

It's a book that's better than I'd thought it would be, but not quite as good as Billingham has shown himself capable of. Still, it's a surprising, satisfying crime novel, with a nice sizeable dollop of societal analysis.

Third Best out of Five
This is Mark Billingham’s fifth and latest novel featuring DI Tom Thorne, with Buried (number six) due out in mid-2006.

Thorne’s been on gardening leave since the death of his father last year which also gives him time to recover from his previous experiences detailed in The Burning Girl, the author's fourth novel. In Lifeless, Thorne offers to go undercover and live on the streets of London to help track down a serial killer who kicks dozing dossers to death. It emerges that the link between the murders is an event that took place during the Gulf War in 1991, one that was captured on a videotape and which falls conveniently into the hands of the police. So the storyline is a whodunit along with the motives behind the brutal killings.

I still don’t think that Mark Billingham has bettered his debut novel Sleepyhead. His writing is always readable and worthy of purchase, but he seems to be running out of fresh ideas. Lifeless is quite consistent, never boring but if it comes under the category of suspense thriller then there is little to be found of either – murder mystery would be a safer classification but the only characters I found myself relating to or caring about were the regulars of Thorne, Holland, Brigstocke, Hendricks and Kitson. All the other characters – victims, suspects and backing-crew – are generally forgettable characters which left me unconcerned when another body is found and unmoved when the penny drops and Thorne nails the baddie.

But I suppose I must be considered a fan since I have bought every one of the author’s books and I won’t hesitate to buy his next. It’s just that I have this feeling that he could work harder at the plot and create a more multi-layered work of fiction with more wide-ranging and inter-twining events and characters. I have a feeling that Mark Billingham’s inspiration to write came in part from Thomas Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs and in his first book Sleepyhead he made a pretty good attempt of producing something worthy of comparison - it's arguably his only truly original piece of writing. He’s gone off the boil a bit since then, in my opinion, producing relatively mainstream murder mysteries but I think if he really put his mind to it he could emulate and even better his debut novel.

another blinder from mark billingham
I was eagerly awaiting this book as all his other books have been excellent and i was not disappointed.
Tom Thorne is a character that you really care about and is totally believable.Mark Billinghams writing is very witty as he is a stand-up comedian as well as an author and i like the fact that they are set in and around Kentish Town as that is where i come from.
Every thing about this book is great and if you havent read any of his other books i highly recommend them all.