What the night brings A Tom Thorne novel

Four dead: done in by poisoned donuts. Sounds like a cozy culinary mystery, but this is actually one of the darkest Tom Thorne mysteries to date, the nineteenth after Billingham's The Murder Book (2023). London DI Thorne, who was there when the donuts were being devoured (and almost stole a bite) finds himself in charge of the investigation. The round of arsenic-spiked treats is followed by other deadly attacks on officers who, it turns out, have been abusing their positions by sexually assaulting women trying to report crimes. Thorne and his team are forced to ask how their oath to "prevent all offences against people" has been so egregiously corrupted. Their anger and betrayal, and their determination to uncover the loathsome truth in all of its enormity, are palpable, even as they realize a senior police official must be involved. Incandescent with its brilliant plotting and much needed doses of gallows humor, the story proceeds with considerable speed to a staggering ending that may not be the one readers will be expecting.[HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY]: Fans will be eagerly awaiting the next entry in this popular series that has been translated into 25 languages and sold over six million copies.

Billingham's DI Tom Thorne tales depict human baseness, and each is more insightful and action-packed than the last. In this 19th entry (following The Murder Book), a fiendish foe aims to destroy the public's confidence in the police. Over his time as a detective inspector in London's major crimes unit, Tom Thorne has survived hellish damage to his mind and body. When four constables die after eating donuts left in a gift box on a car's bonnet by persons unknown, his hunter's instinct fires up. With barely a scintilla of evidence left at additional killing sites later, Thorne and his teammates Nicola Tanner and Dave Holland build a profile of a wickedly clever criminal whose identification disappears like a will-o'-the-wisp. When eyewitness evidence finally points to two perps at each crime scene, Thorne faces the greatest challenge of his distinguished career. VERDICT Anyone familiar with the reputation of Billingham's outstanding police procedural series won't be surprised at the novel's ending. Readers who've quaffed a pint in a pub with Ian Rankin's John Rebus or Colin Dexter's Endeavour Morse will welcome this generous ploughman's lunch with Tom Thorne.--Barbara Conaty

Someone seems to have declared a vendetta against London's Metropolitan Police, and it's up to DI Tom Thorne and his mates to find out who--that is, if he can actually trust his mates. The arrest of Nick Cresswell for murder is utterly routine until the sequel: Four officers from Wood Green who made the pinch acting on Thorne's intelligence celebrate by sharing some doughnuts left in the back of their car with a cheery note--"Thanks for everything you do!"--and end up poisoned, three of them fatally. The stabbing of PC Adam Callaghan in Hendon Park moments after he'd turned off his bodycam to avoid showing the woman who'd lured him there makes it clear that there's a larger pattern at work. More deaths will follow, presumably at the hands of LoveMyBro, the dark-web habitué who called PC Christopher Tully, one of the doughnut victims, and PC Craig Knowles, now imprisoned for rape, "two peas in a pod." But who is LoveMyBro? Is he an antirapist vigilante or a rapist himself? And how can he possibly have learned everything he must know in order to strike so many targets without leaving a trace? Working once more with pathologist Phil Hendricks, his partner DI Nicola Tanner, and his old friend DI Dave Holland, who's back at the Met after a few years away, Thorne fights colleagues and regulations to build a case against the man he's convinced is behind the mayhem, only to see it collapse in a spectacularly depressing way. Even more disturbing is the growing likelihood that their quarry is either getting assistance from a highly placed police officer or is such an officer himself. The more attached you are to this standout franchise, the harder the final revelations will hit you. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.