The Killing Habit: Mark Billingham (Tom Thorne Novels)

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A new Mark Billingham is always a treat and The Killing Habit hurls the reader straight into the action. Thoroughly enjoyable for being so very real' As most crime aficionados know, animal abuse can be a telltale starting point for serial killers. DI Tom Thorne feels the cat case may be a softening of the edges for an active murderer. An investigation into unsolved murders finds several cases with a similar theme propelling Thorne's suppositions forward. He just needs the brass to be on board to cough up some cash for a sting operation. I very much enjoy Billingham’s witty and easy writing and I like his imperfect leads – including some of our extended cast – and appreciate (that) he features diverse characters – several are gay and from a range of cultures.

Thorne is (despite being a Homicide detective) tasked with looking into the violent killing of cats. He decides (in a leap which is taken on faith) that the perpetrator is killing cats as he "comes down" from killing women. In a further leap, he posits that the method of murder will be strangulation and manages to cobble together a group of unsolved strangulation murders to pin on the cat killer. (Of course, the murdered women do all turn out to have a common link eventually). The strength of the DI Thorne novels is in the knowledge that all of this could be real. The closing of the novel will please even the most discerning fan of the police procedural, and leave you yearning for more.

In the 1980s he moved to London where he currently lives with his family. In 1987 he decided to follow a career in comedy before becoming a full-time writer. Folks in the UK might know the author as an actor, a stand-up comedian, as well as a TV writer. It has long been the received wisdom that the corpse-littered career path of the common or garden serial killer—despite the fact that there was no such thing—more often than not began with the killing or torture of animals. Cats, dogs, birds. Together with fire-starting and persistent bed-wetting beyond the age of five, it was one of the telltale traits that made up the so-called Macdonald triad: a set of three behavioural characteristics suggested by an American psychiatrist in the early sixties that might help to identify nascent serial offenders.

Others are less convinced, so once more, Thorne relies on DI Nicola Tanner to help him solve the case, before the culprit starts hunting people. It's a journey that brings them face to face with a killer who will tear their lives apart.Each book in the series revolves around a case that is solved by the end of the book. However, if you get to like the rather flawed (damaged as some call him) character of Tom Thorne, you will want to follow his progress and learn more about him, without skipping a book here and there. And that ending makes me think another Thorne book is definitely in the pipeline. Hooray *fist pump* 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. When the two cases come together in a way that neither could have foreseen, both Thorne and Tanner must risk everything to catch two very different killers. I stumbled across Mark Billingham’s Tom Thorne series at number 13. Amazingly it wasn’t a problem at all that I’d missed the first dozen and the two ( Time of Death and Love Like Blood) I’ve read since could easily be read as stand-alone novels for those who haven’t previously met the English homicide detective. (Bringing me to the 15th book in the series and my third!)