This was different to the standard Thorne books as for the first part, he is little more than a bystander, supporting Helen who has a much bigger part to play in this book.

There are a couple of story arcs and I particularly liked where Helen is heading (no spoilers here), the issues she brining to our attention are contemporary, dark and unfortunately prevalent in our modern society and I am pleased she has found the strength to deal with this issue. Two schoolgirls are abducted in the small, dying Warwickshire town of Polesford, driving a knife into the heart of the community where police officer Helen Weeks grew up and from which she long ago escaped. Following not too far off his disastrous outing to Bardsey Island this book opens with Tom and Helen on a much needed holiday in the Cotswolds. There are strong hints of a recent case that caused Tom Thorne (and Hendricks) enormous grief and it is clear that this ‘holiday’ is overdue and much needed. As suggested above there are secrets to be revealed and a relationship tested to the extreme in a great example of modern British crime fiction.

Although I picked up along the way that their partnership is fairly new, it was refreshing to have the detective in a seemingly stable, loving relationship. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

For the first part of the read the couple are more observing than detecting so it seemed to start off quite slowly for me, but once they got into their stride I really enjoyed this story, which kept me guessing as to whether or not Stephen Bates had committed the crimes and if not, then who had done it, with quite a number of suspects emerging.But I don't want to spend all my time reading mysteries so I am always reluctant to try new ones and I am especially reluctant to jump into the middle of a mystery series, but in this case I had an opportunity to get a free-be from Netgalley so I took a chance based on the description of the story. Thorne and his partner police officer Helen Weeks are on a trip to the small Warwickshire town of Polesford where an old school friend of Helen's is in trouble and in great need of comfort and assurance, her partner Stephen Bates having been arrested and accused of murder. Not for long though because when the news comes through of a crime is committed in Helen’s home town, Polesford, her ears prick up.

To sum up, a standard serial killer police procedural, quite well-written, slow in places, with lots of swearing, a bit of angst, the obligatory child abuse angle, and some gratuitous and silly police brutality.

La lecture de 'Time of Death' est très agréable, mais je n'ai pu m'empêcher de ressentir une certaine frustration à certains moments: une enquête dépourvue d'action, qui ne repose que sur des spéculations, une impression de remplissage avec des banalités, un manque de crédibilité quant au mode opératoire du coupable, .