The Road to Hell is Paved with Atonements (Cry Baby thriller REVIEW)

It could be a scene from anywhere… a couple of young mothers—good friends—taking their kids to play in a neighborhood park. The women kick back on a bench in the shade to chat, while their little boys climb on the jungle gym, swoosh down the slides, and burn off excess energy as only a couple of active seven-year-olds can. 

When one of the women heads off to the restrooms, the other decides to sneak a quick cigarette—she’s been trying to quit, but isn’t there, yet—which requires rooting around in the depths of her handbag for the elusive lighter. It’s only once she’s finally lit up and taken that first drag, that she notices the children are nowhere in sight… but then she hears them, faintly, in the woods bordering the park on one side, and relaxes; they’ll soon tire of the trees and come tearing across the playground again. 

The first mom returns, upset enough to find her friend smoking… but far more so when she doesn’t see the boys. Waving off the other’s explanations, she runs over to the woods, shouting for them. After a couple of moments, a rustling among the fallen leaves signals the boys are on their way back. Only one boy—bawling his head off—emerges from the trees, though… and that boy isn’t her son.

It could be a crime from anywhere… but this time, it’s in London, in 1996, and it’s down to a troubled young detective—DS Tom Thorne—already weighted down with personal problems aplenty, to bring the missing lad home, in Mark Billingham’s newest, Cry Baby.

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We’ve seen a lot of Tom Thorne over the years (beginning with the  superb Sleepyhead in 2001), but we’ve never seen this exact Tom… just thirty-five years old, in the middle of a very messy divorce, and haunted by an old case in which his own error in judgment played a part in the deaths of three little girls. This Tom isn’t as sure of himself, of his co-workers, of his job, or of life, in general… but he is sure of one thing: that he’ll do anything to solve this case.

 

Will history repeat itself, though, or will Tom find a way to make up for a past mistake… that is the question.

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As a long-time reader of Billingham’s Thorne series, it was an unexpected pleasure to travel back in time in Cry Baby, and observe Tom as—not a newbie, exactly, but certainly as a man in over his head, just trying not to crack from the pressures pounding at him from all sides. (His first meeting and subsequent getting-to-know-you interactions with pathologist pal Phil Hendricks are a real treat.)

In typical Billingham style, all of the major (and some of the minor) players are given enough space to breathe and feel alive to us, rather than merely serving as names on a page to whom stuff happens. 

My only complaint, to be honest, is the sheer amount of time devoted to soccer, which, maybe if you’re a big soccer fan… and you rabidly followed the sport in 1996 (or are a soccer-stats nerd)… would be of interest to you? (Eventually, I had to just skim through all those paragraphs and pages discussing scores and players and plays and rivalries and… yeah. Meh.)

Overall, though, this is Billingham—and Thorne, et al—in fine form, and an easy recommendation for all fans of the series.

~GlamKitty