Sleepyhead (Tom Thorne Novels)

Product Information

Lazybones (Little, Brown & Company, July 2003), ISBN 0-316-72493-9; ISBN 0-316-72494-7; William Morrow US (June 2004), ISBN 0-06-056085-1 Scaredy Cat (Little, Brown & Company, July 2002), ISBN 0-316-85954-0; Time Warner UK, November 2002, ISBN 0-356-23206-9; William Morrow US, June 2003, ISBN 0-06-621300-2 Billingham’s flawless plotting and the steadily increasing sense of fear combine to make this one of the best debut novels of the year.Going from 0 to 60 in record time, his next book is on my must read list.

Thorne knew that in this respect, it wasn't unlike any other major city - New York or Paris or Sydney - but he felt instinctively that London was .... at the extreme. The darker side of that history, as opposed to the parks, palaces and pearly kings' side that made busloads of Japanese and American tourists gawk and jabber. The hidden history of a city where the lonely, the dispossessed, the homeless, wandered the streets, brushing shoulders with the shadows of those that had come before them. A city in which the poor and the plague-ridden, those long-since hanged for stealing a loaf or murdered for a shilling, jostled for position with those seeking a meal, or a score, or a bed for the night. Billingham has received nominations and awards related to all aspects of his various careers. What's That Noise (which he wrote and presented) won the 1995 Royal Television Society award for "Best Entertainment Programme", [9] while Knight School was nominated for the RTS's "Best Children's Drama" award two years running. Maid Marian and her Merry Men Series 3 (Tony Robinson, Mark Billingham and David Lloyd on 'creative writing'). David Bell. UK: Eureka. 2006 [1993]. EKA40224. {{ cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) ( link) The general theme of Scaredy Cat is really the power of fear, and that fear is a very powerful weapon, and if you are prepared to instil it, you have a very powerful weapon that is every bit as dangerous as a gun or a knife. Also what happened to me in that hotel room fed directly into a sub-plot in Scaredy Cat with some very nasty crimes carried out in hotel rooms. [3] Television adaptations [ edit ]Other contributors include: Laura Lippman • Lee Child • John Connolly • Lynda La Plante • John Harvey • Peter Robinson • Fidelis Morgan • Val McDermid • Karin Slaughter• Emma Donoghue• Denise Mina • Kelley Armstrong • Jane Haddam Billingham was shortlisted for the 2015 Dagger in the Library UK Crime Writers' Association award for an author's body of work in British libraries. He was shortlisted again in 2019 and won the award in 2022. [19] The Other Half [ edit ] Sleepyhead is one of the finest first-novels I’ve read in a long while. Mark Billingham has brought a rare and welcome blend of humanity, dimension, and excitement to the genre and earned an instant seat at the top table of crime novelists. An exceptional debut.

After graduating with a degree in drama from the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts, he helped form a socialist theatre company, Bread & Circuses, in Birmingham. Bread & Circuses toured with shows in schools, colleges, arts centres and the street. [3] In the mid-1980s he moved to London as a "jobbing actor", taking minor roles in episodes of TV shows Dempsey and Makepeace, Juliet Bravo, Boon, and The Bill. [2] [4] After playing a variety of "bad guy roles such as a soccer hooligan, drug addict, a nasty copper, a racist copper or a bent copper", he claimed that he had become disenchanted with acting and that the emphasis was not on talent, but on looks. [3] Billingham currently hosts UKTV's crime podcast A Stab in the Dark. [21] Each episode includes a discussion on a particular theme from crime fiction and crime drama, and has featured guests including David Morrissey, Val McDermid, Michael Connelly and Ann Cleeves.With Sleepyhead, Billingham leaps to the upper echelons of British crime fiction in a single bound. Billingham lives in North London with his wife Claire and their two children. He supports Wolverhampton Wanderers, although his protagonist Thorne supports Tottenham Hotspur. [22] Bibliography [ edit ] Dancing Towards The Blade" in Men From Boys by John Harvey (ed.) ( Arrow Books, September 2004), ISBN 0-09-946152-8 You] worry that you will be entering that world of the strange cliche-ed cop, but you soon realise that you have to get comfortable in that world. You think "Hang on, some of the clichés are part of that territory". It would like writing a Western and going "Oh no I've given him a horse! What a terrible cliché!" It's not a cliché – It's part and parcel of the genre – cowboys have six-guns, horses and stetsons and detectives have [a] past... problems [and] flaws, because if they don't, then there is nothing to read about. [3] Lifeless (Little, Brown & Company, May 2005), ISBN 0-316-72752-0; Scorpion Press, June 2005, ISBN 1-873567-70-7; William Morrow US, September 2006, ISBN 0-06-084166-4

Who would have thought a stand-up comedian could write a British police procedural as good as those produced by crime queens Elizabeth George and Ruth Rendell?Billingham's novel Lazybones won the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award 2004 and he won the same award in 2009 for his novel Death Message. [10] In The Dark was nominated for the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger at the 2009 Crime Thriller Awards. [18] In 2011, Billingham was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame.