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| The Burning Girl | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark Billingham
Publisher: Avon
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy New: $2.90
You Save: $5.09 (64%)
New (21) Used (18) from $0.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 893672
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 3.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 0060745274
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
EAN: 9780060745271
ASIN: 0060745274
Publication Date: June 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
A contract killer is carving his way through North London's criminal underworld, leaving a bloody X on his victims' backs and taking Billy Ryan's gang down one thug at a time. Detective Inspector Tom Thorne and his team know there's a turf war going on, but who's attempting to take over Ryan's racket isn't quite clear. When DCI Carol Chamberlin comes out of retirement to work on the cold case squad and asks Thorne for help solving an old murder, the past and present catch up in what looks like a continuation of a twenty-year-old gang war. And when someone carves an X in Thorne's door, a fuse is lit that stretches from the eponymous burning girl of the title--Chamberlin's old case--to the gang war that's lighting up the London sky. It's a clunky plot that relies on telling more than showing, slowing down the pace and makeing it difficult for the reader to care about any of the principals involved--either the victims or those who seek justic for them. Billingham has written better thrillers (Lazybones, Scaredy Cat), but this one doesn't live up to their promises. --Jane Adams
Product Description
Once burned . . . By rights, the horrific schoolyard crime should have been laid to rest twenty years ago. An alleged perpetrator confessed and now is growing old behind bars. But the case still haunts ex-Detective Chief Inspector Carol Chamberlain -- and she has asked DI Tom Thorne to uncover a disturbing truth that lies buried in the ashes. A series of brutal gangland slayings -- each victim found with an X gouged into his back -- has Thorne plunging into the fires of a deadly turf war, as he attempts to tie together the threads of perplexing crimes separated by decades. But time is rapidly running out in his search for a copycat who revels in blood and pain -- because the body count keeps rising . . . and someone has carved an X into Tom Thorne's front door.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Tom Thorne: as cynical as ever. December 8, 2008
Mark Billingham, The Burning Girl (Morrow, 2004)
Billingham's fourth Tom Thorne novel opens with an old, old case that's been haunting folks recently, especially Carol Chamberlain, one of the tangential characters from earlier books; it's a case on which she was the lead back when it happened. It was always considered to be a contract thing, but something always nagged at Chamberlain. Now Thorne and Chamberlain have evidence--spotty evidence, but evidence--that the guy who was originally put away for it, who's spent the last twenty years in prison for setting a high school girl on fire, wasn't the guy who actually lit the match. Worse, that evidence also suggests that the victim may not have actually been the intended target, who is now the ex-wife of the head of a prominent crime family who are engaged in a turf war and are the victims of a nasty serial killer (who may have been hired by the other side), the second case that runs through the book. There's also a third involving the murder of a Turkish video store owner--that may also be linked to organized crime. You may be seeing a pattern here.
Billingham's normally a comedy guy, but over the novels previous to this he's shown he knows how to do the mystery/thriller thing pretty darned well, and The Burning Girl is no exception to the rule. Solid mystery, great characters, just a touch of that noir spirit. Mark Billingham is quietly becoming one of the mystery writers working today who consistently delivers. If you don't know his work yet, you should. ****
Creates a lot of questions about Thorne March 1, 2008
I enjoyed this breezy and interesting book. It is not heavy on forensics (that is a good thing, in my opinion) but it is based on characters and feelings. Billingham writes about female characters particularly well and every so often will write a paragraph or page that is so striking and thought-provoking that it makes the price of the book.
The part of the book that I am so-so about is the actions of the lead character Tom Thorne. Without giving any spoilers, he makes a couple of decisions in the book that are questionable morally and professionally, I am not sure if the author needed to go down this path.
As with all of Mark Billingham's books, very readable.
Fourth in the Series November 11, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Mark Billingham was born and brought up in Birmingham. Having worked for some years as an actor and more recently as a TV writer and stand-up comedian his first crime novel was published in 2001.
Though still occasionally working as a stand-up comic, Mark now concentrates on writing the series of crime novels featuring London-based detective Tom Thorne. Mark lives in North London with his wife and two children.
For any new readers who have not read any of Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne books, you are missing a real treat. Start reading them now, I am sure you will not be disappointed.
Carol Chamberlain seeks the help of DI Tom Thorne. She was the arresting officer in a case twenty years ago and she is now retired. The case, a particularly nasty one involved a young woman, Jessica Clarke being set alight. Her attacker is still in jail but someone is harassing Carol, claiming that he was the one who set the girl alight.
The original suspect, when caught, freely admitted to the crime, so what is going on. Tom Thorne is up to the proverbial eye-balls in an investigation but is fed up with having to report his every move the DCI Tughan, so trying to help Carol out seems like a little light relief. However things soon start to turn nasty and Thorne doesn't realise just how nasty . . .
 Story about an 'old flame' isn't Mark's hottest novel June 1, 2007
Mark Billingham is one of those authors on my 'Buy Everything he Writes' list - he made a strong impact on me with his earlier works (Sleepy Head, Scaredy Cat and, in particular, Lazy Bones) and I will definitely order his new novel Lifeless; to be honest though I didn't think The Burning Girl is Mark's best effort, not up to the high standard of his previous contributions to the DI Thorne series. He's one of few writers I know to actually be able to instil a sense of fear using no more than the written page, and capable of creating some pretty sinister, dark characters too. The Burning Girl, however, in spite of some trademark nasty scenes, didn't have that same fear-factor that I kind of expected - although I thought that the examinations of Thorne's character were rather better executed than in (for example) Scaredy Cat.
For anyone who has bought The Burning Girl as their first foray into the writing skills of Mark Billingham, I would urge them to buy all three of this previous novels because in my humble opinion they are each considerably better. I hope that those high standards return in Lifeless - I'm sure they will.
(Review written in 2005)
 Spectacularly Terrifying... January 11, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Although I read this some time ago now, just thinking back to it, and the preceeding two novels give me the absolute shivers; and not just because of the unimaginable degree of human depravity that billingham so awe-inspiringly describes. No, this one is all the more sinister for me because a large chunk of it is set on my backdoorstep! Worser still, I remember reading some of the menancing Zarif passages as I sat on my bus to work right OUTSIDE Manor House tube, and looking up in shock and unease at a small Turkish cafe / takeaway on the corner of the opposite side of the road (you'll have to read them to truly understand why that is SO skin-crawlingly creepy!).
Also the Camden scenes are set practically next door / round the corner to my old offices, so it REALLY didn't take to much imagination to visualise the bullying brothers notifying EVERYONE of their presence as they stepped out onto the street.
I think the storyline is brilliant, and the plot twists are thick and fast as ever, leaving you with the tiniest bit of motion-sickness!
I'm a bit behind in the Thorne series so can't wait to catch up with the latest two! AMAZING writing here once again; WELL DONE MARK!
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