Sleepyhead

To His Friends, His Foes And Even To Himself It Looks As Though Tom Thorne's Career Is On The Skids. On His Last Case He Had Seriously Over-stepped The Mark, And Now Gardening Leave Has Been Suggested And All He Has To Tend Is A Window Box. So When It Appears Someone Is Targeting London's Homeless Community It Seems Perfectly Natural For Thorne To Take A Step Nearer To The Gutter And Go Undercover Amongst Them. He Blends Into The Sometimes Invisible Community Easily - Too Easily Perhaps - But The Information He Gleans Quickly Proves That This Is No Random Killer, It Is Someone With A Very Distinct Purpose And A Very Specific List Of Victims, Only The Team Supporting Thorne From The Outside Don't Have The Key To Motive Or Identity. Then Somehow The Fact That A Policeman Is Working Under Cover Becomes Public Knowledge ... With Acute Observation Of Character And Place, Combined With His Acknowledged Mastery Of Plotting, Lifeless Raises The Thorne Series To An Even Higher Level. Mark Billingham. Tom Thorne's career is on the skids. Having seriously crossed the line on his last case and depressed over the recent suspicious death of his father, the once ambitious police detective has been reduced to pushing papers... and is being encouraged to take a prolonged leave of duty.But someone is stalking the city's most destitute citizens. Three homeless men have recently been kicked to death, each brutalized corpse discovered with a banknote pinned to its chest. With nothing to lose, Thorne volunteers to try to find the killer—taking to the streets he knows so well from his days as beat policeman and as a homicide detective, but this time joining the squalid ranks of life's rejects. In this harsh and harrowing netherworld, with its own rules and moral codes, a shocking link between the brutal crimes and a fifteen-year-old atrocity could end up costing Thorne what little life he has left.