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Tyson Adams Reviews
Book lover and science nerd.
See more from me at http://tysonadams.com
Currently reading
Kill or Be Killed, Vol. 3
The Problems of Philosophy
Dead Ever After
Babylon's Ashes
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. Alain de Botton
Deadpool by Joe Kelly Omnibus
Solomon Creed
The Dying Hours
I've always wondered how many professional killers like to stage suicides. Purely on a intellectual curiosity basis of course. Honest.Mark Billingham's The Dying Hours is another in the successful run of Tom Thorn crime novels. In the last book, Thorn was bumped back down to uniform and is loving it so much that he starts an investigation into a suicide that didn't seem right to him. It isn't long before he finds others that aren't suicides but part of a hit list for a retired criminal. And that's pretty much the novel summed up.
Therein lies my problem with the book. Crime novels are as full of tropes and cliches as any other genre and there are only so many plots to go around, it is about using the tropes in an interesting way. Billingham is highly regarded and I've heard good things about his work, but this story felt flat to me. There were too many well worn steps being trod over the course of the novel and it bored me. Reading other reviews there were many long time fans who felt the same way.
If you want a standard crime novel, this will fit the bill. But it might be worth checking out the other books in the series, or other works from Billingham, instead of this one.
