Rating: 
Summary: I trusted you. You, the reviewers with comments...
Review: And was let down. I'm new to reading (I was more like "I'll just wait for the movie" type) and love a great thriller, but this wasn't one of them. I respect the Brittish, but I still don't understand lots of their terms and meanings, so I got lost in that a lot. I like the characters in it, Thorne, McElroy, and Holland, the story just didn't move me like I want thrillers to do. I'm now reading another highly reviewed book, "The Vanished Man" by Jeffery Deamer. It's scaring the bejesus out of me so far, so maybe you the reviewers aren't that bad, and I'll just blame this one on me being the "New reader guy, who doesn't get it". =)P.S. I do agree with one of the reviews about the epologue...it really was sad, but good.
Rating:
Summary: I trusted you. You, the reviewers with comments...
Review: And was let down. I'm new to reading (I was more like "I'll just wait for the movie" type) and love a great thriller, but this wasn't one of them. I respect the Brittish, but I still don't understand lots of their terms and meanings, so I got lost in that a lot. I like the characters in it, Thorne, McElroy, and Holland, the story just didn't move me like I want thrillers to do. I'm now reading another highly reviewed book, "The Vanished Man" by Jeffery Deamer. It's scaring the bejesus out of me so far, so maybe you the reviewers aren't that bad, and I'll just blame this one on me being the "New reader guy, who doesn't get it". =) P.S. I do agree with one of the reviews about the epologue...it really was sad, but good.
Rating: 
Summary: IS SMARTY PANTS NEXT?
Review: Billingham's titles are great; not surprising since he is also a well-respected standup comic. However, even though his books have touches of humor, they are dark, disturbing, but definitely worth reading.
This time, our reluctant hero, Tom Thorne, is after a serial killer, who has killed a young woman in front of her little boy. Alas and alack, it appears there are TWO serial killers working together.
As we come to know the two villains in flashbacks, Billingham weaves a tightly constructed tale of a warped love, and it's disastrous results.
There are some strong supporting characters in Billingham's novels, and they help move the twisting plot along to a heart-stopping climax in a schoolyard. The identity of the real sicko is surprising, and don't be surprised at how Billingham treats his heroes, either!
An outstanding book, can't wait for the next one! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Rating: 
Summary: A darkly, intense British thriller
Review: DI Tom Thorne is back after a promising debut in SLEEPYHEAD. Tom and his team of DS Sarah McEvoy and DC Dave Holland investigate a pair of serial killers who kill in tandem. One killer is more brutal than the other is. The first deaths involve a three-year-old child who was locked in the house with the body of his dead mother for three days, and a woman left behind a rubbish bin at the rail station. Tom is a gloomy chap in the best of times. Now he is tormented by the thought of the child left with his dead mother. He makes it his personal mission to catch the killer. The characters are well-fleshed out with all the fragility and emotion that comes with being human. The subplots relating to the team and their interaction were very interesting. The reader really gains an emotional connection to these characters. The story is told by the use of flashbacks so we get to know who the killers were. The present is a little harder to discern. One of the killers has changed his name and is living a "normal" life. The plotting is dark and emotional. You can try to figure things out as you read along, but things are not always what they seem. There are some good twists and turns. The ending was quite poignant and stayed with me several hours after finishing the book. The book was not perfect. There were some subplots that just seems extraneous and made the book drag in spots. Overall, it was a very good book and I look forward to the next entry in this series.
Rating:
Summary: Slow moving character rich suspense novel
Review: DI Tom Thorne is faced with solving a series of murders. It appears that women are being killed in pairs. Two separate killings are occuring at the same time in and around London. The killers apparently kill in tandem in that the means of death are similar. Thorne must catch them before they kill again. The key is to find out who they are and what drives them to kill.
SCAREDY CAT being a pure psychological suspense novel is one of the more disappointing reads of the year. It is packages as a highly suspenseful and fun serial killer novel. However, rather than plot or pacing, the emphasis is on characterization contained in a slow, meandering quite ordinary police procedural. To add to the sense of disappointment, when the true identity of the killer is announced, I scratched my head in bewilderment in that I didn't recall him previously. To his credit, Mark Billingham manages to create full, rich and memorable characters. I just wish they moved a bit quicker.
Rating:
Summary: none
Review: England's answer to Dennis Lehane. Grabs the reader right from the start and doesn't let up until the shocking end. 'Scaredy Cat' is a rollicking rollcoaster of a read. Enough hairpin twists and turns, intrigue and suspense for a half a dozen novels!
Rating:
Summary: Not as good as his first...
Review: Getting out of the tech genre for awhile, I relaxed with Mark Billingham's Scaredy Cat. This is his follow-up to Sleepyhead (that I really liked)...
A number of killings in England has Tom Thorne looking for a serial killer. The victims are found in pairs, and although the methods are similar, the intensity of the violence is different. He figures there are actually a pair of killers working in tandem. The pair of killers go back to a grammar school friendship, and it's the typical controller/controllee type relationship. The cops quickly get one of the killers, but then try to set a trap for the other one. Unfortunately, the trap backfires and the killer starts to strike closer to home. The question becomes can he be stopped before he kills someone close to Thorne.
As I mentioned above, I really liked Sleepyhead. Very dark, and hard to tell who was guilty and who was innocent. Scaredy Cat was just as dark, but the suspense wasn't there. You find out right away who the killers are, but you're not quite sure about the current identity of the controlling personality. The relationship between the killers is rather complex and somewhat ill-explained, and one of the common elements that tie them together is left to hang out there for far too long. When it's finally revealed, it doesn't seem to have the impact that it was probably intended to. Thorne's personal torments don't seem to do anything but sit there. The relationship between his partner Holland and a female cop with issues also doesn't seem to add anything to the storyline.
Maybe it's just the sophomore jinx, but this novel definitely isn't on par with his first...
Rating:
Summary: This would make a good movie which is not saying much
Review: I love good books so i feel it is my duty to write a review for this one as i bought it based on the reviews. I had high hopes for this book as it was very entertaining and different upon first read. However, towards the end there were some completely inane subplots thrown in that were contrived, added nothing to the story that first drew me in and wrecked the book for me. The ending was a bore and again contrived which is why i think this book would make a good movie as most films about serial killers always have this kind of ending. All i can say is this book was much too hollywood for me and like i said before that is not a good thing. I am really sad that i wasted my time so please don't waste yours.
Rating: 
Summary: Was this even a crime novel?
Review: I read a lot of crime novels, and this one sits down at the bottom of the bunch. The idea of two serial killers working in tandem has already been done before (as early as James Patterson's Kiss The Girls), and this one brings nothing new to the concept. Instead, we're treated to lengthy descriptions of the main characters' personal lives. Tom Thorne seems to be conflicted by something new in every novel, but this novel was so tiresome I forgot what he was upset about a day after reading it. There's Thorne's young partner who is in a troubled relationship. There's a new female officer who is eager to prove herself - and also has a drug addiction.
When the book remembers it's actually a crime novel, it isn't too bad. There are decent moments of suspense, and one or two twists, but I saw the ending coming from a mile away. All in all, Scaredy Cat feels like an extended episode of NYPD Blue or The Bill (a British police series). It's unoriginal, exceedlingly soapy and often predictable. You're better off picking up Lazybones or Sleepyhead, which are decent crime novels by the same author.
Rating:
Summary: Mark Billingham proves he's a "must-read" author
Review: Mark Billingham is a standup comic. I am unfamiliar with his stage work, and perhaps it's just as well, as I would have come to SCAREDY CAT (and, for that matter, his debut novel SLEEPYHEAD) with some preconceived notion that it would be at least quasi-comedic, that Billingham would possibly be a British Donald Westlake. For all I know, Billingham may be the funniest man on the planet, but you couldn't prove it with SCAREDY CAT. SCAREDY CAT is an almost unrelievedly grim police procedural, though the setting is not a fictionalized New York City but rather modern-day London. The novel focuses on a series of murders being investigated by Team 3 of the unimaginatively named Serious Crime Group (West) of the Met, London Metropolitan Police. Detective Inspector Tom Thorne, introduced in SLEEPYHEAD, is back, and Billingham continues his slow and methodical sketching of Thorne's personality. Thorne may well be one of the most quietly complex characters in modern detective fiction; just when the reader thinks he or she has a handle on him, there is a twist or a turn, and suddenly one's opinion, one's conception, needs revision. Thorne is no genius, and he knows it. This is important; he is able to admit mistakes and to turn, albeit grudgingly, on a dime to correct them, even as he is weighed down by regret. Ah, and the series of murders. Two women are murdered in London, some distance apart, with enough similarities to convince the police that they are, at least initially, the work of the same person. The murders resemble a pair of killings that occurred several months previously in which two other women were killed on the same day, apparently at the same time. Thorne comes to the conclusion that the two pairs of killings are linked, and that there is not one killer, but two, working in tandem with each other. He is horrified to further realize that, every time one body is found, there will be another waiting to be discovered. And while the methods of the murders may be the same, the killers themselves, it seems, are very, very different. As the reader follows Thorne and his team (a group of extremely interesting individuals, to say the least) through their investigation, Billingham describes the intricacies of the investigators, the murderers and the survivors, the relatives of the victims left behind in death's wake. And while the identity of one of the murderers is revealed relatively early, the other is not revealed to either Thorne or the reader until the very end. The result is a novel with such skilled pacing that it is almost excruciatingly painful to read it without finishing it in one sitting. Yet it is simultaneously a novel of such simple craft, such intelligence, that one wants to savor it slowly. The result is an interesting dichotomy that few writers are able to achieve. It is not necessary to read SLEEPYHEAD prior to reading SCAREDY CAT, though a reader introduced to one will inevitably be drawn to the other. Billingham, with only two novels, has become a writer who will undoubtedly be added to many "must-read" lists. Oh, one other thing about SCAREDY CAT: this book has perhaps the saddest Epilogue I have ever read. Don't skip ahead --- you won't really get it unless you read the whole book. And you'll definitely want to read the whole book. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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