In The Dark

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Written from the figural narrative situation, the reader is thrown from the beginning into a sometimes really great written plot and the next minute the plot is one chaos. Billingham doesn't seem to work well in helping the reader visualise the characters, so they all seem quite faceless; or in the case of the pregnant woman, faceless with a large belly. It was a lot of fun finding myself re-examining my memory and assumptions trying to figure what was going to happen next. There are pages in which I needed a few lines to understand where the plot now was and what character I had in front of me.

As heartless as that seems, he actually has some reason to feel that way—several months earlier, Helen had a brief affair, and he is not convinced that the baby is his. Helen and Paul are joined by pathologist friend Phil Hendricks as they become further embroiled in the abduction case. Whether he actually fired the shot that caused the killing or not, he was prepared to do so, so the premise that he was in some way a good person seems flawed. Secrets are uncovered as fast as bodies, and the story's final twist is as breathtakingly surprising as they come.There were also a couple of points where I had to check back for the exact role of some of the minor characters, as they were mostly sketched over and tended to blend into the background until they were needed to add to the story - a little like the chorus in a Shakespearean play. Slowly but surely they’re recovering from the trauma of what happened in Polesford and getting used to the idea that Helen’s baby is probably not Paul’s. Just because Billingham doesn't rely here on the cunning of his long-serving DI, Tom Thorne, for the leg work, it doesn't mean that the plot is not stuffed with some fancy twists and turns. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

This week’s episode saw a lot more of Matt King’s idiosyncratic pathologist character, which injects just the right amount of comic relief while helping push the plot on a little too.The plot line was reasonably good and the characters were interesting in a minor sort of way, but none of them truly engaged me. She's stuck in a cramped flat with noisy neighbours and a partner who doesn't seem overjoyed at the thought of the pending arrival. This reads as an honest and authentic portrayal of London gang life in a world where the truth is hard to find.