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''Sleepyhead'' is a serial-killer novel, set in the contemporary London and featuring DI Tom Thorne as the main character. It was Mark Billingham's debut as a crime writer and was received very well. I have enjoyed the novel, but I think that it had a lot of faults of the typical debut - I have now read the other instalments of the series and there are better ones out there, my favourite being [[''Scaredy Cat]] '' (this was one that really scared me and it's not an easy feat for a pop-book!).
Thorne is one of your typical fictional detectives: a hardened but sensitive copper, pig headed, stubborn and generally very good at what he's doing and rather bad at getting on with his superiors and some of his peers. He reminds me of Rankin's Rebus which is not necessarily a bad thing but doesn't make Thorne a particularly original invention. He's divorced; listens to country music and an occasional trance piece, likes his beer and wine but doesn't smoke or drink spirits. In a post-modernist way he's rather aware of the fact that he is a typical crime-novel figure but seems happy enough with it. Thorne has a sidekick in the person of Dave Holland, a young policeman torn between following a safe course of career and doing something worthwhile. The best friend is a gay Mancunian pathologist called Hendricks - one of the best creations of the book overall.
