The Dying Hours by Mark Billingham is the eleventh instalment in the gritty, best-selling Tom Thorne crime thriller series. Known as one of England’s crime fiction heavyweights, Billingham delivers a gripping and atmospheric novel that sees Thorne demoted and reluctantly back in uniform after too many brushes with authority. It’s been a quarter of a century since he last wore “the Queen’s cloth,” and the change is bitter — but Thorne’s instincts remain as sharp as ever.
When a series of apparent suicides among London’s elderly population starts to feel suspicious, Thorne suspects there’s a killer at work. Dismissed by his former colleagues on the Murder Squad, he’s left to investigate alone, navigating a dangerous world where nothing is as it seems and trust is a rare commodity. With time running out and the threat growing, Thorne finds himself hunting a predator with an eerie ability to make victims end their own lives — a killer unlike any he’s faced before.
