Sleepyhead (Tom Thorne Book 1)

Plot/Storyline: 3 3/4 StarsThis is a British mystery with a unique plot where the killer does not actually want to be a killer. I did feel like the difference from other serial killer novels would have stood out a bit more had the killer been more successful in his endeavors.The book moved along at a fairly fast pace. There were quite a few action and tension-filled scenes to keep the reader enthralled. Almost every scene forwarded the story with good attention to plot detail. Even the scenes with Allison, the girl in the coma, speaking were essential to the storyline and not just tossed in for shock effect.Reading a true British novel takes a bit of extra concentration on my part. I know a lot of British words that are different, such as `boot' for `car trunk'. However, I still manage to learn more. In this one, I learned that `pissed' means `drunk,' not `angry.' However, this `other language' gave the book a little more flair as it immerses the reader in British Culture.I was unimpressed by the ending. The reasoning behind the killer's motives just did not add up for me. I do realize that you pretty much have to be a bit nuts to go around killing people. I also realize that many killer's motives would not be logical to a sane person. And, well, I do consider myself to be mostly sane. However, in fiction, authors can certainly imagine and write about logical motives, and it appears this author tried to do so. It just fell short of the mark when it came to explaining, not the killings, but the urge to leave the girls living in comas.Character Development: 4 1/2 StarsTom Thorne, while a bit cliched, was still a well-developed character. He is a crusty old investigator with some old-school techniques and not well liked by his peers for his tendancy to bend the rules. Yes, it's a bit trite, but the very familiarity makes for a good, comfortable read.Anne Coburn, the love interest and doctor for Allison Willets, was a bit weak, yet still a decent supporting character.Allison Willets is pretty much the star of the show and makes the book really stand out. Her viewpoint is told with incredible emotion.Writing Style: 5 StarsThe writing style is excellent. There is plenty of description to admire, without being overburdened with it. The dialogue is excellent with a major swipe of realism. You can actually hear the English accent while reading.Editing/Formatting: 5 StarsBoth were of professional quality.Rating: PG-15 for Violence, Language, and Sexual References-------------------------------------For more reviews, including articles and author commentary, have my blog delivered to your Kindle daily. Just search Amazon for "Red Adept".

I did this kind of backwards. I read "Lazy Bones" first and so I knew who got spared and who didn't make it from the first to the third book in this series. It didn't hurt the suspense or the story, though. This one is good enough to stand on its own. And what a concept! We have here a criminal (lunatic?) who doesn't want to kill people. His or her idea is to deliberately induce a stroke to a victim so that they are still completely cognitive but unable to move more than an eyelash. Absolutely paralyzed and still fully intelligent with complete knowledge of the crime, but unable to communicate. And young girls are killed whilst this fiend practices the fine art of paralyzing without killing. It is a dreadful concept and gives me the absolute willies. We have the usual marginal Detective Inspector (Tom Thorne), his colleagues, and "incident room" badinage, but I do wish that we could sometimes have a detective who is actually functional in his or her personal life. Ian Rankin ruined things for us with Rebus and nobody will ever write the somewhat redeemable detective better so I wish everyone would quit trying. Having said that, this is a good and creepy read and the ending is a little weak, but also a bit of a relief. Or is it? Just the concept of an intentionally induced stroke will follow you around for a while afterward.

Choosing the correct amount of stars for Sleepyhead left me waffling...started out to give the book three, but decided on four because I did like the book. It kept my interest, which can't be said for so much fiction today. I liked Thorne and Holland, the two British policemen who worked together at times. They both seemed real and fallible, just like so many of us, and, at the same time, they worked so hard to do the right thing. Billingham's writing kept me hooked, as far as needing to know the resolution of the Sleepyhead murders. My criticism would be that I thought the tone of the 'locked-in' victim's inner dialogue was too much like a man at the first of the book. I don't think I've ever heard a girl/woman talk like this one did, even in an outlandish street urchin character's voice. That continued throughout the book until the author made the victim "read" more like a girl in the last few chapters. I didn't like Ann, the doctor. There also seemed something false about her too, and I mean that as far as her inner thoughts regarding this policeman she suddenly had the hots for.One scene really stood out to me, and I went back and re-read it because I thought it was excellent--it was where Thorne discovers a witness, vital to the case, has been murdered. The author describes Thorne's fear and horror in great, descriptive detail--this passage is haunting.

This book was all over the place and half the time I was confused by who was talking or what was happening. The other half of the time I found my mind wandering and I couldn't care less what was going on. I love a good mystery but there was not much to keep me interested in this book

Not easy to out sleuth the detective in this one. A good villain and a good love interest makes for a read that is tough to set aside.

This is a really good enjoyable crime thriller that has some good twists and turns although nothing particularly unique or stand out (this is not necessarily a bad thing mind). Tom Thorne is the lead detective on a murder investigation that throws up plenty of questions about the killer's real motives, especially when one of his victims survives but is trapped inside her own body. The case also gives Thorne plenty of flashbacks to a case long past that has haunted him in the intervening years. Of course there is the usual love interest thrown up by the case which clouds judgements and offers plenty of scope for conflict and debate. While this doesn't really offer anything new to the genre it is a good enjoyable read and I think I'll be looking out for more from this author in future. A nice break from those more taxing reads.

I got this book for free as part of an Amazon promotion, but this is the type of book I read and enjoy anyway. The product description does an excellent job of explaining the story without spoiling it. Storyline seems original enough and DI Tom Thorne was a character I eventually warmed to. It had plenty of twists and turns and had good tension in the right places. Given how the story was panning out, I was expecting a predictable ending and I was pleasantly surprised that it was anything but predictable. The ending particularly was gripping and once I got to near the end I just had to carry on reading to the end even though it gave me a late night. A dark but easy to follow crime story and I will be looking into more of the author's works at some point.

This is the first of Mark Billingham's books I've read. It's a reasonably well-paced thriller with some humorous touches. The main character is a flawed but insightful detective with left-leaning liberal sensibilities. Most of the other characters are quite clichéd. The characterisation of the "locked in" patient is better, I thought, than any of the other characters. The plot twists were fairly predictable but not implausible.Definitely not the worst book of this kind that I've read and I would try other books by this author to see how the main character, and the author's style, develops.

I don't think this is Mark Billingham at his best, I've read other books by him which have been considerably better.I didn't take to Tom Thorne at all & so wasn't interested in his love life or the past case he was still mulling over time & time again andI found the story hard to follow but it was probably because I was too bored to concentrate. On a positive note though I didn't guess the murderer - is that because it's a better tale than I'm suggesting or because the ending was implausible? You decide.

Fairly typical of what has long become a very routine genre, Sleepyhead was mostly well written and well paced and was a reasonable way of passing the couple of hours it took to read. The locked-in victim was sympathetically written but she seemed like something of a page filler in places when she could have driven the narrative a little more. The plot was over-reliant on an obvious red-herring which the reader familiar with this genre will spot at once (and once s/he does the inevitable denouement becomes, well, inevitable). I found Tom Thorne to be an easily forgettable principal. Naming no names, the barely in control, troubled plod character has been done more memorably by other writers but I for one would like to see a British detective novel in which the principal character is more than a 'perm any two from five' mash-up of broken marriage/alcohol abuse/failed relationship with children/unresolved/cold case/borderline personality disorder.