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Title: In the Dark

Author: Mark Billingham

Narrator: Adjoa Andoh

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-02-09

Publisher: Whole Story Audiobooks

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

The result is disaster for another unlikely family: DS Paul Hopwood and his girlfriend Helen Weeks, who's carrying a baby that may or may not be his. Relations have been cool between Paul and Helen ever since he found out about the fling she had at a particularly inopportune time. Now they're never going to warm up again. It's a sad story of random gang violence, but not, it seems, an uncommon one - except for a series of dark revelations.

First, the accident may have had less to do with drugs than an internal investigation by the police; second, there's a growing suspicion that the freak accident may not have been so accidental after all; third, somebody is evidently closing the case a step ahead of the authorities by killing the friends in Theo's gang, leaving him the odd man out in more ways than one.

In a city where violence can be random or meticulously planned, where teenage gangs clash with career criminals and where loyalty is paid for in blood, anything is possible. Secrets are uncovered as fast as bodies, and the story's final twist is as breathtakingly surprising as they come.

Members Reviews:

Social study with looney tunes

I had a hard time getting into this story at the beginning, as a large cast of seemingly unrelated people got introduced and the story seemed to be going nowhere slowly. But around the middle it picked up and the web linking all these people started to emerge. I finally quite liked it overall, but there were a lot of loose ends as the tale was more about the environment than than the individuals.

I added whispersync after about 20% of the book to speed me up - big mistake! The narrator makes no effort to make the listener aware of changes in perspective (which are happening quite often) and gives really weird voices (straight out of looney tunes) to some individuals that do not fit the book at all.

Gangsters old and new and just a little Thorne

This book sees Mark Billingham on form and to form. The story explores the London underclass of small time gangstas counterbalanced by traditional East End Gangsters you might find in a guy Ritchie film.

The plot drives forward though there are a few time twists and plot tricks to keep you smiling through quite a bleak and violent tale. It?s always interesting when crime writers write a book that is not about their familiar character. It?s even more fun when our old friend gets a bit part as Tom Thorne does in this one I wasn?t quite convinced by the plot?s central premise it really stretches credulity in a way that might be OK in a country house murder but not in something as authentic as this. The atmosphere and some unlikely sympathetic characters carry the book through though and it is a very haunting piece of work.

A special mention has to go Adjoa Andoh for an absolutely superb performance of the text; she got the street chat just right and was also great in central role of the pregnant heroine.

Overall a gripping and memorable book full of Mark Billingham?s characteristic hard edged humanity.

Different, but just as brilliant...

I've read all of Mark Billingham's Tom Thorn novels and last year's non-Thorn (or "Thorn-lite" novel "Rush of Blood", and thoroughly enjoyed them all.

I wasn't entirely sure what to expect of this.