Cop killings thriller earns top Mark for Billingham

Every crime fiction addict has a top of the pops list. Or should that be top of the cops?

Slow days on social media often mean someone will post a request for “Your top ten cosy crime writers.”

Or “Who is best at tartan noir?” or “Scandi noir” or “Old school cop with drinking habit.”

The listings are endless. The permutations infinite.  And generally pointless.  Also great time-wasters.

Readers are a pernickety mob and getting even two lists that agree is as likely as winning the EuroMillions jackpot.

There will no such list from me.  How is it possible to whittle the myriad crime fiction writers down to a meagre list of, say ten?

The answer: it is not; and I am not going to waste time, yours and mine, in trying.

It is equally certrain that I am not likely to walk on  by whatever book the prolific Mark Billingham next produces.

Always reliable, guaranteed to intrigue, bright whip smart dialogue, and usually with a neatly judged leavening of humour.

The total so far, he assures us in a postscript to What the Night Brings,  is twenty-five over the same impressive number of years.

And not all of them featuring the sparky duo of Tom Thorne and Nicola Tanner who, sad to report, make their final appearance in this most recent thriller.

Yes, it’s goodbye to Tom and Nic. And therefore possibly also to Dave Holland and Phil Hendricks, the equally sharply drawn support acts to the stars of the show.

To summarise the plot would be to attempt a hazardous route strewn with so many twists and turns that spoilers are sure to be revealed.  So why expose the shocks and surprises that lie in wait from go to whoa?

In brief, it is a tightly woven tale of murder and revenge, of suspect loyalties, betrayal and deceit.  And made all the more tense by being closetted  within the detectives’  own highly secretive world..

A claustrophobic collective where self-preservation has priority over truth.  Where decisions are not always for the common good.

Are the cops killing cops? And why?

And who is leaking confidental info on highly sensitive and ultra secret moves to winkle out the culprits?

Suspicion breeds suspicion. Mistrust of colleagues becomes a default setting in police politics.

And it all begins with a  box of jam doughnuts.

They are found  on the bonnet of their squad car by four uniformed cops  doing sentry duty during the arrest of a wanted criminal..

The pastries are a  surprise pick-me-up treat in the middle of the night.  Made all the more enjoyable by the words scrawled on the box,  “Thankyou for everything you do”.

Words soon found to be laced with meaning way beyond any first impressions.

Laced, in fact, with poison.

Just like the doughnuts,.

Which ensures that before the night is over, four cops are dead.

Readers are hurled headlong into a deadly maze that soars relentlessly to a shocking climax.  With Tom and Nicola increasinly baffled by the high-risk,   and very deadly, machinations of their unknown enemy.

A thoroughly good read.