Sleepyhead (Tom Thorne, Bk 1) Author: Mark Billingham
	Book Information Publisher: Avon Books Book Type: Mass Market Paperback Rating: 9 ISBN-13: 9780061032219 - ISBN-10: 0061032212 Publication Date: 2003 Pages: 432

With this first work, Billingham has concocted an intense, creepy variation on the serial-killer theme this villain doesn't want to murder but instead tries to induce strokes that will lock his victims into a perpetual comatose state. His first three attempts fail (the victims die), but he finally succeeds with Alison Willetts, a young woman who ends up able to see, hear, and think but little else. The case falls to London detective Tom Thorne, a slightly tattered middle-aged cop who has seen too much death and finds his judgment clouded when he falls in love with Anne Coburn, Alison's doctor, while suspecting that Anne's best friend is the perpetrator. The strength of what could have been a standard medical/police procedural lies in its complex characters, serpentine plot twists, and dark ending.