Love Like Blood (Tom Thorne Novels)

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And his friendship with Phil Hendricks, and with this book in particular, Hendricks’ casual bantering with Tanner, provide the moments of much needed light relief you come to rely upon.

I’ve been eagerly awaiting Mark Billingham’s next Tom Thorne book, and “Love Like Blood” exceeded every expectation I had.Tanner seems completed unbothered that people want to kill her and barely seems touched by her partner being killed. She knows from Tom Thornes reputation for not playing by the rules, that he is the one she needs to help her with her ongoing investigation. The main villain didn't come as much of a surprise, but I felt that the denoument of the second case came from too far out of left field. Now I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t have been moved and indeed horrified by the true story of Banaz Mahmod and the way in which she suffered at the hands of family for the simple act of falling in love with the wrong man.

Although there were many seemingly unconnected threads throughout the book, including the harrowing case of two small children suspected of being abused that Helen was working on, Billingham gathers them all together at the same time and pulls them in so tight that you struggle to see how they ever seemed loose to begin with. It’s an immersive read that kept me gripped throughout and I hardly put my Kindle down whilst I read this story.

Billingham continues to succeed in keeping the readers interested and involved in his long Tom Thorne series, this police procedural seeing the grumpy detective helping colleagues investigating the brutal crime of honour killing. If you can kill your own flesh and blood because something they've done means you don't think you can hold your head up in a temple or in some poxy neighbourhood cafe. I was a little confused with the chapter that indicated that a body had been found in a reservoir and there was only a minor reference to explain this later on. The writing is always immersive and completely addictive – as a reader you genuinely live with these people for a while. And how he and Hendricks lamented the fact they would much rather be eating a curry from the Bengal Lancer and not the curry house local to where Thorne now lives.