In the Dark

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In the Dark (eBook) Pub. Date: 10/6/2009 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
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In the Dark (Mass Market Paperback) Pub. Date: 9/29/2009 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

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In the Dark Pub. Date: 10/1/2008 Publisher: Renouf Pub Co Ltd
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In the Dark Pub. Date: 9/30/2008 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
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Overview

On a rainy city night, a handgun is fired at random. A struck car swerves and plows into a bus stop, killing an unsuspecting bystander. In an explosive instant, a cold-blooded gang initiation ends one life and forever changes three others: the desperate teenager who pulled the trigger . . . a policewoman on maternity leave . . . and an aging gangster plotting a terrifying revenge.

The truth about the shocking incident will tie them all together in a lethal blood knot. And nothing is what it seems.

In the Dark is the most powerful and unflinching crime novel yet from the remarkable Mark Billingham—a gripping journey into the modern urban darkness where violence is both indiscriminate and meticulously planned, and youth gangs take on established criminals for rule of the streets.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

The line between cop and criminal becomes dangerously blurred in Billingham's excellent stand-alone thriller. Told from multiple points-of-view and full of red herrings, the story begins in the London suburbs with a gang initiation. Hoping to climb the ranks in a local gang and egged on by his friends, 17-year-old Theo Shirley fires a gun into a woman's car on a rainy night. The woman isn't killed, but her car plows into a crowded bus stop, killing Det. Sgt. Paul Hopwood. Paul's pregnant girlfriend, Det. Constable Helen Weeks, also a member of the Metropolitan Police, can't accept that his death was an accident. She retraces his footsteps and discovers unsettling connections between Paul and Frank Linnell, a powerful player in the shadowy London underworld with his own reasons for unraveling Paul's death. Best known for the Det. Insp. Tom Thorne series (Buried, etc.), Billingham does for South London what Richard Price does for Manhattan's Lower East Side in Lush Life. (Oct.)

Library Journal

Billingham's (Death Message; Buried) first stand-alone thriller is aptly titled, as both readers and characters are in the dark through most of the story. The novel revolves around an incident that takes place one dark London night when a gang initiation gone wrong results in the death of a police officer. His wife, Helen, nine months pregnant and also a police officer, discovers some strange things in his effects and begins to poke around in his recent work, which leads her to fear she didn't know her husband well at all. Meanwhile, the gang responsible for the death is being gunned down in its South London territory, and neither the police nor the gang knows who is responsible. Billingham writes sensitively and sympathetically about both the pregnant wife and the gang initiate while keeping the tension high with suspenseful plot twists. Readers of the genre will enjoy this somber and clever mystery.
—Lisa O'Hara

More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

Billingham's series sort-of-hero, DI Tom Thorne (Buried, 2007, etc.), has to settle for a supporting role, practically a walk-on, in this tangled tale of what happens after an aspiring gang member shoots into a car in London. Theo Shirley is ready to move up. Now that he's sold enough drugs to support a girlfriend and a baby son, his mate Easy Dennison offers him a boost up the next rung of the ladder. As part of his initiation, Theo's taken out one night in a car without headlights. When the driver of a BMW flashes her lights at his car, he's ordered to shoot into her back seat, and his target, Sarah Ruston, runs her BMW into a bus stop. The result is disaster for another unlikely family: DS Paul Hopwood and his girlfriend Helen Weeks, who's carrying a baby that may or may not be his. Relations have been cool between Paul and Helen ever since he found out about the fling she had at a particularly inopportune time. Now they're never going to warm up again. It's a sad story of random gang violence, but not, it seems, an uncommon one-except for a series of dark revelations. First, the accident may have had less to do with drugs than an internal investigation by the police; second, there's a growing suspicion that the freak accident may not have been so accidental after all; third, somebody is evidently closing the case a step ahead of the authorities by killing the friends in Theo's gang, leaving him the odd man out in more ways than one. The detection is hit or miss-mostly miss-but Americans who think the bleak world George Pelecanos brings to life is limited to the nation's capital will find Billingham's atmospheric maze of London byways just as sprawling and squiggling with desperatecops and robbers.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780061432767
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 9/29/2009
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 432
Sales rank: 638,231
Product dimensions: 4.18 (w) x 6.82 (h) x 1.20 (d)

Meet the Author

Mark Billingham is the author of nine novels, including Sleepyhead, Scaredy Cat, Lazybones, The Burning Girl, Lifeless, and Buried—all Times (London) bestsellers—as well as the stand-alone thriller In the Dark. For the creation of the Tom Thorne character, Billingham received the 2003 Sherlock Award for Best Detective created by a British writer, and he has twice won the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. He has previously worked as an actor and stand-up comedian on British television and still writes regularly for the BBC. He lives in London with his wife and two children.

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Anonymous

Posted August 21, 2008

IN THE DARK lives up to its title

In London, Ezra ¿Easy¿ Dennison informs Theo Shirley his illegal drug sales revenues have reached the level where the gang is ready to promote him. Theo is elated as he has two dependents to take care of. However, he has one more step left to prove he is ready for increased responsibility. Theo is in a car in which the headlights are off he is to shoot in the backseat of a selected vehicle. A BMW flashes the lights at the darkened auto and Theo thanks the driver by firing as directed into the car.----------- The driver Sarah Ruston loses control and veers into a bus stop where Detective Superintendent Paul Hopwood and his eight plus months pregnant girlfriend Helen Weeks are waiting. One of the two at the bus stop dies. The police investigation soon takes a wicked turn beyond gang initiation rituals into an internal affairs investigation as someone believes the freak ricochet accident was not a random incident that individual is easily killing the gang and others involved in the deadly incident.--------------- IN THE DARK lives up to its title as it paints a bleak grim London landscape in which life is worthless regardless of which side of the crime line a person belongs too. The story line is action-packed as the police assume initially a sad weird but deadly accident killed one of them until the gang murders begin. As such the plot switches from the deep gritty look at the social and economic behavior of gangs to a more suspenseful but less insightful homicide investigation. This is a strong crime caper even with Mark Billingham¿s prime protagonist Detective Inspector Tom Thorne playing a limited cameo role.--------- Harriet Klausner
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Posted October 24, 2009

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