Mark Billingham The Burning Girl

The Burning Girl

Mark Billingham

Morrow, Jul 2005, $16.95, 368 pp.

ISBN: 0060745266

North London is shook by the brutality of the opening assault by the Turkish Zarif family, who employs a vicious hit man, leaving an X carved on the back of victims, members of the competing Ryan family. As DI Tom Thorne leads the investigation into the vicious murders, he also knows that the Ryan family will retaliate in violent kind once they recognize the adversary who has killed four of their members. Thorne knows that neither family could care less what happens to innocent bystanders because war is hell.

As he struggles with the gang war, former DCI Carol Chamberlain asks for his help. Two decades ago someone torched schoolgirl Jessica Clarke believing she was gang boss Kevin Kelly's daughter Alison. Seemingly coincidently, Billy Ryan heads what was the Kelly family. As Gordon Rooker, who confessed to the fiery murder, is up for release, someone has called Carol claiming to have burned her. Reluctantly he agrees to look into the 1984 horror and the present phone calls, not realizing this all tie together with the X marks the spot.

Turning from his usual Thorne serial killer plot, Mark Billingham provides an interesting English police procedural that grips the audience with THE BURNING GIRL scenario and the gruesome X calling card. Bordering on an antihero, the DI is at his best as a thorn in the sides of both gangs as he crosses the legal line to insure justice for a little girl is served; he is not as motivated with the homicides of the gangs. Carol is an intriguing secondary character who with her over the hill cold case squad retirees seems perfect for her own tales.

Harriet Klausner