Love Like Blood
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Brilliant.--Independent (UK)
Honor-based violence is a scourge in Britain, where the Crown Prosecution Service estimates that the 12 or so honor killings reported each year are only a fraction of the true number committed . . . In Love Like Blood, Mark Billingham puts human faces on one such case . . . Although 'dishonored' male relatives are prime suspects in most cases of punitive violence, squeamish families often prefer to shop the job to a middleman with access to professional hit men'thugs like Muldoon and Riaz, who collaborate efficiently but whose cultural clashes can be morbidly funny.--Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review--Love Like Blood moves quickly and skillfully with reliably readable prose . . . In each chapter, Billingham adeptly unspools a new thread, a new twist, which pushes the reader onward into the story, as he deftly manages an expansive plot without slowing down the momentum of the characters or the story.--Mystery Scene
--Love Like Blood hums along on all six cylinders. Billingham has always been a smart writer, one who delves into the nooks and crannies of the police procedural genre where others don't think of going, and once again he takes the genre to new heights here with its clever murder hypothesis that is as current as today's headlines . . . Billingham doesn't get near the recognition in the United States that he has earned and deserves. Hopefully Love Like Blood will change that.--Joe Hartlaub, Bookreporter
"Gripping . . . A mighty fine police procedural, and it's a pleasure, as always, to watch Tom sift through clues and intentional misdirection along the journey to find his perps. And in keeping with the time-honored tradition, there is a final-chapter surprise to keep you on your toes."--Bruce Tierney, BookPage
--Billingham does justice to a subject that could be handled badly during an era of rampant Islamophobia, never climbing on a soap box but treating the topic with the shades of complexity and ethical clarity it deserves. He has traded the theatrical serial-killer-with-a-difference plotlines of the first entries in this series for a more thoughtful if less frantically paced engagement with violence and its social vectors. But he keeps a few surprises up his sleeve.--Barbara Fister, Reviewing the Evidence
Shocking and topical . . . Billingham has few equals in moulding convincing characters and his finest creation Thorne is in top form . . . An engaging thriller from one of Britain's best crime writers.--Daily Express (UK)
Billingham's ground-breaking novel Love Like Blood . . . confronts the phenomenon of 'honour'-based killings . . . A gripping, unsensational take on a type of crime that is happening more frequently than many of us realise.--Sunday Times (UK)
Mark Billingham's . . . crime novels don't shy away from being pitch-black as well as witty. Love Like Blood features the welcome return of Billingham's astute and empathetic London-based detective Tom Thorne.--Daneet Steffens, Seattle Review of BooksBillingham's skillful plotting is everywhere in evidence here, and Thorne remains a compelling character, comparable to Connelly's Bosch and Rankin's Rebus.--Booklist
Irascible, irritating and indefatigable, DI Tom Thorne has earned his place in the pantheon of fine fictional policemen, alongside those legendary inspectors Morse and Rebus . . . Billingham's passionate depiction of the injustice and brutality that flow from these killings spills from every page, making this one of his most powerful crime novels, written with a fury that does both him and Thorne justice.--Daily Mail (UK) This sensitive topic is delicately handled, with a perfectly executed and thoroughly unnerving twist at the end.--Guardian (UK) "Chilling and moving. Tom Thorne is on terrific form."--Times (UK)"Fueled by Thorne's dry wit and some neat twists . . . the book builds to a good, tense ending."--Deadly Pleasures, Rating: A Entertaining . . . One perfectly executed twist at the end will leave [readers] eagerly awaiting the next in this series.--Publishers Weekly Very few will predict the unnerving coda . . . A new and urgent spin on his tried-and-true procedural formula.--Kirkus Reviews A gripping and genuinely tragic story.--Literary Review (UK)
