Sleepyhead (Tom Thorne Novels) Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Sleepyhead (Tom Thorne Novels) Book

The art of inducing fear in a reader via the printed page is a speciality of only a few skilled craftsmen. Mark Billingham is such an author, and Sleepy Head is such a book. The blurb on the jacket warns that we are in for a disturbing experience and that is precisely what we get: "He doesn't want you alive. He doesn't want you dead. He wants you somewhere in between". The killer who Billingham's protagonist Tom Thorne is up against is a particularly creepy specimen: he has savagely killed three victims but his fourth, although alive, is perhaps not so fortunate. She has undergone a deliberately induced stroke and although all her senses are intact, she is totally unable to move or communicate. This hideous condition, called Locked-in Syndrome is, however, quite possibly the killer's first miscalculation ... or is it? Soon the dogged Thorne (given to distrusting his own abilities) is playing a cat-and-mouse game with a psychopathic killer. And the brilliant and sadistic killer is just as interested in leading Thorne a merry dance as he is in fulfilling his degraded obsessions. All characterisations here are spot-on, even the killer (although one wonders just how many more hyper-intelligent psychopaths readers will be prepared to take) while the British setting is handled with intelligence, the horrific set pieces with real élan: His head moved up, through the hole and into bright white light. He blinked quickly to adjust and opened his eyes. Thorne's last thought, before his body turned ice cold and began to shake quietly, was that he'd been right to be afraid... --Barry Forshaw Read More

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  • Amazon

    He doesn't want you alive. He doesn't want you dead. He wants you somewhere in between ...

  • Play

    It's rare for a young woman to die from a stroke and when three such deaths occur in short order it starts to look like an epidemic. Then a sharp pathologist notices traces of benzodiazepine in one of the victim's blood samples and just traceable damage to the ligaments in her neck and their cause of death is changed from 'natural' to murder. The police aren't making much progress in their hunt for the killer until he appears to make a mistake: Alison Willetts is found alive and D.I. Tom Thorne believes the murderer has made a mistake which ought to allow them to get on his tracks. But it was the others who were his mistakes: he doesn't want to take life he just wants to put people into a state where they cannot move cannot talk cannot do anything but think. When Thorne helped by the neurologist looking after Alison starts to realise what he is up against he knows the case is not going to be solved by normal methods - before he can find out who did it he has to understand why he's doing it.

  • TheBookPeople

    The first British crime novel by Mark Billingham to feature D.I. Tom Thorne, Sleepyhead is the story of what at first appears to be an epidemic of young women dying from strokes, but when Alison Willet survives after being deliberately induced, it becomes apparent there is something far more sinister at work. Alison is the only person able to reveal the identity of the killer, but she has been rendered completely unable to move or communicate. Thorne, and the neurologist looking after Alison, start to realise the killer just wants to put people into a state where they cannot do anything but think. Thorne realises the case will not be solved by normal methods - before he can find out who did it, he has to understand why he did it.

  • BookDepository

    Sleepyhead : Paperback : Little, Brown Book Group : 9780751531466 : 0751531464 : 01 Nov 2007 : He doesn't want you alive. He doesn't want you dead. He wants you somewhere in between ...

  • 0751531464
  • 9780751531466
  • Mark Billingham
  • 4 July 2002
  • Sphere
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 416
  • New Ed
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