Showing results by narrator "Mark Billingham" in All Categories

It's 1996. Detective Sergeant Tom Thorne is a haunted man. Haunted by the moment he ignored his instinct about a suspect, by the horrific crime that followed and by the memories that come day and night, in sunshine and shadow. So when seven-year-old Kieron Coyne goes missing while playing in the woods with his best friend, Thorne vows he will not make the same mistake again. Cannot. The solitary witness. The strange neighbour. The friendly teacher. All are in Thorne's sights. This case will be the making of him...or the breaking.

Billy is a highly decorated veteran, with a reputation for excellence, honesty and integrity not only supporting his comrades Ant Middleton, Jason Fox and Ollie Ollerton but equally intimidating and inspiring the contestants who take on the gruelling challenges each week. The Hard Way details Billy’s story thus far but will also educate and enthral those wishing to seek a challenge and conquer it - the SAS way.

It was a vicious, calculated murder. The killer selected his victim at Euston station, followed her home on the tube, strangled her to death in front of her child. At the same time, killed in the same way, a second body is discovered at the back of King's Cross station. And this grisly event eerily echoes the murder of two other women, stabbed to death months before on the same day. It is DI Tom Thorne who sees the link and comes to the horrifying conclusion. This is not a serial killer the police are up against. This is two of them - and two killers are way more deadly than one....

It's only 10 days since Douglas Remfry's release from prison, having served seven years for rape, and now he's dead: naked on a bare mattress in a grubby north London hotel room, his head hooded and his hands tied with a brown leather belt. Someone knew he was coming out. Someone wanted to mete out some punishment of his own. And when a second sex offender is found dead, DI Tom Thorne knows he has a vicious, calculating vigilante on his hands.

Discover one of the two masterful hit novels adapted for the massive new BBC One Drama series In The Dark, featuring brilliant heroine Helen Weeks. Two schoolgirls are abducted in the small, dying Warwickshire town of Polesford, driving a knife into the heart of the community where police officer Helen Weeks grew up. But this is a place full of secrets, where dangerous truths lie buried. When family man Stephen Bates has been arrested, Helen and her partner Tom Thorne head to the flooded town....

Alison Willetts has survived a stroke, deliberately induced by a skilful manipulation of pressure points on the head and neck. She can see, hear and feel, but she is completely unable to move or communicate. In leaving Alison Willetts alive, the police believe the killer's made his first mistake. Then DI Tom Thorne discovers the horrifying truth: it isn't Alison who is the mistake, it's the three women already dead. Thorne must find a killer whose agenda is disturbingly unique, and Alison, the one person who holds the key to the killer's identity, is unable to say anything....

Three men, sleeping rough on London's mean streets, have been found brutally murdered - each victim kicked to death and found with a £20 note pinned to his chest. But were they killed at random, or were they targeted for a reason? Tom Thorne is posted to the same streets - working undercover, disguised as a homeless man. In a harsh and harrowing underworld, Thorne discovers the horrifying link between the homeless victims and the perpetrators of a 15-year-old atrocity. Those who know are keeping quiet. But the word on these streets is that the killer is a cop....

It has been a decade since Alan Langford's charred remains were discovered in his burnt-out car. His wife, Donna, was found guilty of conspiracy to murder her husband and served 10 years in prison. But just before she is released, Donna receives a nasty shock: an anonymous letter containing a photo of her husband. The man she hates with every fibre of her being - the man she paid to have murdered - seems very much alive and well. How is it possible that her husband is still alive?

The Write Stuff is the book-based panel show that takes a witty and whimsical look at well-known authors and their work. Host James Walton challenges the erudite contestants with tricky literary teasers, which they endeavour to answer using a combination of knowledge and guesswork.

DI Tom Thorne has seen plenty of dead bodies in his time. But when he starts receiving sick photos of murder victims on his mobile phone, he soon realises that the next body could be his. And even when the man who has been sending the photos is tracked down, the deadly threat remains, For some, the case is all but closed, but Thorne's nightmare is just beginning.

The Hostage. Police officer Helen Weeks walks into her local newsagent's on her way to work. Little does she know that this simple daily ritual will change her life forever. It's the last place she expects to be met with violence, but as she waits innocently at the till, she comes face to face with a gunman. The Demand. The crazed hostage-taker is desperate to know what really happened to his beloved son, who died a year before in youth custody.

Sarah thinks of herself as a normal single mum. It's what she wants others to think of her. But the truth is, she needs something new, something thrilling. Meanwhile, DI Tom Thorne is investigating a woman's suicide, convinced she was driven to do it by a man who preys on vulnerable women. A man who is about to change Sarah's life.

A master of the psychological crime genre, Patricia Highsmith is most famous for her quintet of best-selling Ripley novels, and her groundbreaking thriller Strangers on a Train (notably adapted as a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock). This extensive collection encompasses her best-known works, as well as selected short stories and three programmes about the author herself and her greatest creation, charismatic anti-hero Tom Ripley.

From number one best seller Mark Billingham comes a twisting, unbearably gripping DI Tom Thorne and Nicola Tanner thriller inspired by a dramatic real-life case. How do you catch a killer who is yet to kill? We all know the signs. Cruelty, lack of empathy, the killing of animals. Now, pets on suburban London streets are being stalked by a shadow, and it could just be the start. DI Tom Thorne knows the psychological profile of such offenders all too well.

As DI Nicola Tanner investigates what appears to be a series of organised killings, her partner, Susan, is brutally murdered, leaving the detective bereft - and vengeful. Taken off the case, Tanner enlists the help of DI Tom Thorne to pursue a pair of ruthless killers and the broker handing out the deadly contracts. As the killers target their latest victim, Thorne takes the biggest risk of his career and is drawn into a horrifying and disturbing world in which families will do anything to protect their honour.

Tom Thorne has it all. In Nicola Tanner and Phil Hendricks, Thorne has good friends by his side. He finally has a love life worth a damn and is happy in the job to which he has devoted his life. He has everything to lose. Hunting the woman responsible for a series of grisly murders, Thorne has no way of knowing that he will be plunged into a nightmare from which he may never wake. And he'll do anything to keep it. Finally, Thorne's past has caught up with him and a ruinous secret is about to be revealed. If he wants to save himself and his friends, he must do the unthinkable.

Full of betrayal, deceit and suspense, Die of Shame is the spectacular new book from number-one best seller Mark Billingham - author of Time of Death and In the Dark, both soon to be major BBC series. Every Monday evening six people gather in a smart North London house to talk about addiction. There they share their deepest secrets: stories of lies, regret and, above all, shame. Then one of them is killed - and it's clear one of the circle was responsible.

Teenager Luke Mullen was last seen getting into a car with an older woman. No one can understand why he has disappeared. His father - a former police officer - knows all too well that the longer he is missing, the more likely he is to turn up dead. Then Luke's parents receive an anonymous video. It shows their son, eyes wide with terror, as a man advances towards him holding a syringe. DI Tom Thorne recognises a psychopath when he sees one. And the scene on the tape chills him to the bone - he knows that a child's life hangs in the balance and that every minute counts.

When a dead body is found in a North London flat, it seems like a straightforward domestic murder until a bloodstained sliver of X-ray is found clutched in the dead woman's fist - and it quickly becomes clear that this case is anything but ordinary. DI Thorne discovers that the victim's mother had herself been murdered 15 years before by infamous serial killer Raymond Garvey. The hunt to catch Garvey was one of the biggest in the history of the Met and ended with seven women dead.

A cluster of suicides among the elderly. Such things are not unknown to the police and the deaths are quickly dismissed by the police as routine. Only one man is convinced that something more sinister is taking place.However, no one listens to Tom Thorne anymore. Having stepped out of line once too often, he's back in uniform and he hates it. Patronised and abused by his new colleagues, Thorne's suspicions about the suicides are dismissed by the Murder Squad he was once part of and he is forced to investigate alone.