There aren't enough words to express how much I love this Thorne series. ( )

The best part of the book is the meditation on aging. It was an enjoyable, taut read, but the pacing was a bit off and Thorne and his buddies seemed to be a bit dense at times. Still, a good mystery/thriller. ( )

I was recently sick with the flu and I read almost 6 thrillers back to back. None were particularly memorable but this one. I thoroughly enjoyed it and my point is that it stood out. I had not read this author for a few years but I am now going back to the ones on my shelves. ( )

I've always wondered how many professional killers like to stage suicides. Purely on a intellectual curiosity basis of course. Honest.

Mark Billingham's The Dying Hours is another in the successful run of Tom Thorn crime novels. In the last book, Thorn was bumped back down to uniform and is loving it so much that he starts an investigation into a suicide that didn't seem right to him. It isn't long before he finds others that aren't suicides but part of a hit list for a retired criminal. And that's pretty much the novel summed up.

Therein lies my problem with the book. Crime novels are as full of tropes and cliches as any other genre and there are only so many plots to go around, it is about using the tropes in an interesting way. Billingham is highly regarded and I've heard good things about his work, but this story felt flat to me. There were too many well worn steps being trod over the course of the novel and it bored me. Reading other reviews there were many long time fans who felt the same way.

If you want a standard crime novel, this will fit the bill. But it might be worth checking out the other books in the series, or other works from Billingham, instead of this one. ( )

I found this the least satisfying of all the Tom Thorne police procedurals. He is a character I have always enjoyed, despite his support for Tottenham Hotspur. His flat is five minutes walk away; he likes South London as little as I do, and unlike the other characters in the books, I am not put off by his taste in music; but he hardly appeared in "In The Dark" and as a result of the events in that book he has been put back in uniform. As always Billingham writes well and I turned the pages avidly, but I found the plot a bit too trite, albeit with a couple of good twists. Reading the postscript interview with the author I sense a degree of boredom and I notice that his next book (which I already own is out of series). Perhaps the series has run its course, although perhaps Tom will return invigorated in the manner of Rebus. ( )