DI Nicola Tanner is on compassionate leave after the brutal murder of her partner, teacher Susan Best.

Billingham's passionate depiction of the injustice and brutality that flow from these killings spills from every page, making this one of his most powerful crime novels, written with a fury that does both him and Thorne justice. I really love the way in which his relationship with Helen and her son Alfie is explored, and the scenes where he begins to think about the future will truly melt your hardened heart.And the theme of the book was honor killings, and that is one subject I find very hard to read about. Her partner, Susan, has been brutally murdered and Tanner is convinced that it was a case of mistaken identity--that she was the real target. i was curios as the subject of the book is honour killings in moslem and Sikh families in england - a phenomen which we have in Israel with Muslim a Bedouins. She won't leave the investigation alone though and drags Tom Thorne into her case; unofficially of course.

Thorne's partner Helen is also a police officer and is investigation possible child abuse of two boys who attend the school where Susan Best taught. She’s been investigating a series of killings within the Muslim, Sikh and Hindu communities and is convinced that they are the work of contract killers paid for by family members who are unable to carry out the murders themselves. Translated by Quentin Bates — The Dancer is Icelandic author Óskar Guðmundsson’s second book translated into English, following The Commandments in 2021. As always the plot was excellent, the characters continue to develop and the overall story well paced. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.Tanner believes that she was actually the target of the killers because of her work on a series of honour killings within the Muslim, Sikh and Hindu communities and she enlists the help of Thorne to conduct an unofficial investigation of Susan's death. The writing is always immersive and completely addictive – as a reader you genuinely live with these people for a while. After a couple of very disappointing recent titles in the Tom Thorne series, Mark Billingham seems to have found his mojo again in Love Like Blood. Because of the tight knit relationships within these influential communities, most of these murders go unreported and the victims are often last remembered as "missing". The main villain didn't come as much of a surprise, but I felt that the denoument of the second case came from too far out of left field.