Mark Billingham

It's 1996. Detective Sergeant Tom Thorne is a haunted man. Haunted by the moment he ignored his instinct about a suspect, by the horrific crime that followed and by the memories that come day and night, in sunshine and shadow. So when seven-year-old Kieron Coyne goes missing while playing in the woods with his best friend, Thorne vows he will not make the same mistake again. Cannot. The solitary witness. The strange neighbour. The friendly teacher....

Sarah thinks of herself as a normal single mum. It's what she wants others to think of her. But the truth is, she needs something new, something thrilling. Meanwhile, DI Tom Thorne is investigating a woman's suicide, convinced she was driven to do it by a man who preys on vulnerable women. A man who is about to change Sarah's life.

How do you catch a killer who is yet to kill? We all know the signs. Cruelty, lack of empathy, the killing of animals. Now, pets on suburban London streets are being stalked by a shadow, and it could just be the start. DI Tom Thorne knows the psychological profile of such offenders all too well, so when he is tasked with catching a notorious killer of domestic cats, he sees the chance to stop a series of homicides before they happen. Others are less...

Unconventional Detective Declan Miller has a problem. Still desperate to solve the murder of his wife, a young man has just appeared on his doorstep with a briefcase, containing a pair of severed hands. Miller knows this case is proof of a contract killing commissioned by local ne'er do well Wayne Cutler - a man he suspects might also be responsible for his wife's death. Now Miller has leverage, but unfortunately he also has something that both Cutler...

Two schoolgirls are abducted in the small, dying Warwickshire town of Polesford, driving a knife into the heart of the community where police officer Helen Weeks grew up and from which she long ago escaped. But this is a place full of secrets, where dangerous truths lie buried.

When Donna Langford receives a very recent photo of her ex-husband in the post, she gets the shock of her life because she's just spent ten years in prison for organising his murder. When her daughter goes missing, Donna believes there can only be one man responsible and hires Anna Carpenter, a private investigator, to find him.

It appears that someone is targeting London's homeless community so DI Tom Thorne goes undercover amongst them. The information he gleans is that this is no random killer, it is someone with a specific list of victims.

The first message sent to Tom Thorne's mobile was just a picture - the blurred image of a man's face, but Thorne has seen enough dead bodies in his time to know that the man was no longer alive. But who was he? Who sent the photograph? And why?

Billy Billingham grew up tough; a grim future ahead of him offering little respite from the hostile streets he walked. Leaving school at eleven years of age, the threat of borstal hanging over his head, running with gangs in Birmingham, and almost being killed in a knife fight eventually led to Billy discovering the British armed forces at sixteen years of age. It would be the making of him. Billingham would graduate from the Royal Marine cadets to...

A brilliantly plotted, utterly gripping thriller about the danger of making friends on holiday, 'Rush of Blood' is Mark Billingham's most ambitious work to date.