Billingham created Detective Inspector Tom Thorne for his 2001 debut novel
Sleepyhead, where a case of "Locked-in Syndrome" reveals the dark depths of a twisted mind, as adept at toying with the DI as with the victims. This central character has since featured in the vast majority of his works, except
In the Dark, released in August 2008, in which Thorne has only a very minor role. The author writes that, "if writers want their readers to care about a character, they have to care themselves" and, as such, has imbued Thorne with a lot of his personal characteristics. The two share a birthday, a locale (London) and musical interests (a "love of country music both alt and cheesy" - although Billingham implies that it is
Thorne's fictional musical tastes that have grown on the author).
In talking about the creation and development of his central character, Billingham notes the difficulty and worry involved in trying to create a personality different from those in other existing, familiar and popular works:
- "[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."
Billingham's own website says that the underlying determination of Tom Thorne's character was that he would evolve as the series progressed, and remain unpredictable. While noting that many authors compile "thick dossiers" and "complex biographies" about their characters, noting every quirk and minor detail, Billingham shies away from such minutiae, calling it "limiting"—preferring instead to discover something anew about his own hero with each book, and to pass that novelty on to the reader:
- "The day a character becomes predictable is the day a writer should think about moving on, because the reader certainly will."
Thorne's internal continuity is important to his author—it is important that the events in his past affect who is in the present, although this very aspect of his character causes Billingham great difficulty in describing him without giving away plot twists! Suffice to say that "[h]e works on the Metropolitan Police Murder Squad [and at] the time of the first book, he is forty-one years old. Thorne's surname comes from fellow Comedy Store stand-up Paul Thorne, and the (sur)names of other comics and comedians are liberally peppered throughout the series.
Sleepyhead was released in August 2001, and made it onto the
Sunday Times "Top Ten Bestseller" list, becoming "the biggest selling debut novel of that Summer". In December 2009 it was listed as one of the 100 novels that shaped the decade.
Scaredy Cat inspiration
In 1997, Billingham was the victim of a bizarre and nasty crime, as he and his writing partner Peter Cocks were kidnapped and held hostage in a Manchester hotel room. Turning the event into inspiration for his second Thorne novel,
Scaredy Cat, he wrote:
- "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 instill 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."
The two were kept bound and gagged in their hotel room by a trio of masked men who stole items and credit cards from them. Billingham recalls being terrified by the sheer audacity of the criminals, who managed to instill a feeling of menace and fear into their victims, a theme which was later fed into his novels–"that if one person is able to scare someone so much, they can make them do anything". The
Scaredy Cat storyline thus presents the scenario of tandem serial killers, two individuals ostensibly working together, creating an added air of terror and expectation whenever one of them strikes.
More Thorne
On the heels of 2001's
Sleepyhead and 2002's
Scaredy Cat, Thorne returns in 2003's
Lazybones, investigating the killing of a convicted rapist, and finding it difficult to become involved in the case, since he has little real sympathy for the victim. A messy contract killer and the past cases of a former colleague blur together in
The Burning Girl as the past meets the present in a symphony of violence. Thorne's involvement in a previous case affects his ability to investigate an increasing death toll among the homeless of London in
Lifeless, while a kidnapping case forms the backbone of 2006's
Buried.
Death Message, the Thorne novel published in August 2007 sees him haunted by a psychopath he has already put behind bars, but who is reaching out from prison to manipulate the world outside. After resting Thorne for the standalone thriller "In The Dark" (although he does appear in a very minor role), Billingham's central character returned with a vengeance in 2009 with "Bloodline" and is set to appear again in the 2010 novel "From The Dead".
The first chapter of each of Billingham's Tom Thorne books can be downloaded from his website.
