This is the tenth novel in Mark Billingham’s series featuring Detective Inspector Tom Thorne, and marked a departure from the customary format. As the novel opens, Helen Weeks has stopped off at her local newsagent to buy a paper and some chewing gum, as she does almost every working day This morning proves very different. While she is on the shop, three youths enter and start abusing the Asian shopkeeper. Before Helen can even think about intervening, the shopkeeper has produced a pistol and brandished it at the boys. They run off, but the newsagent then takes Helen hostage, along with another customer who had just entered the shop.

It turns out that the shopkeeper’s son had been imprisoned. He had a friend had been at attacked in the street by a (different) group of youths. During the ensuing fight, one of the attackers had been fatally stabbed with his own knife, and the shopkeeper’s son had been charged with, and convicted of, manslaughter. While serving his sentence in a Young Offenders’ Institute, he had died, apparently from a self-administered drug overdose.

His father is convinced that the truth behind his son’s death has been covered up, and wants a full investigation. Paradoxically, the officer who most trusts to secure this outcome is DI Thorne, who had led the investigation into the street fight, which had concluded with the shopkeeper’s son’s imprisonment. Even Thorne and his colleagues had been surprised at the severity of the sentence imposed, given the circumstances, In a further twist, it turns out that the hostage Helen weeks is her self a police officer, and known to Thorne who had investigated the murder of her partner and father of her son the previous year.

With police in attendance at the shop, and with the Armed Support Unit eager to intervene to bring the situation to a close, Thorne has to try to unravel what happened to bring about the shopkeeper’s death.

This may all sound rather chaotic, with a morass of loose ends. Billingham does, however, manage all the various story threads admirably. With his history of unconventional detection methods, and his complete lack of reluctance to ruffle his superiors’ feathers, Thorne is certainly a strong choice to conduct such an unorthodox, and urgent, investigation, and within a very short time he has managed to stir up a terrific mare’s nest.

Billingham moves the perspective between the hostages and their captor in the shop, Thorne’s own investigations, and the efforts of his long-suffering colleagues, Sergeant Holland and DI Kitson, to unravel background material. He brings it all together in a very tight, and highly plausible manner. ( )

I liked the way this book is written, story has subplots that progress in parallel to one or two other subplots, thus making it not monotonous and binding the reader to the story with intrigue. Though there are not many shocking twits and turns to this book, it's simple, and captured the essence of the theme it revolves around well.
There are a few parts to the story that aren't very convincing, like:
**SPOILERS**
1) Only Helen was spoken to during calls, and no one bothered about the other hostage.
2) Many times, even Thorne is depicted worrying just about Helen, though the author tried justifying this decision at the later chapters of the book, it didn't necessarily convince me completely.
3) The decision to use technology to tap into the store was taken about after 2 days of the kidnapping. Like, none of the officials thought of it earlier.
4) Prosser would take so much strain, risk and resources to kill Amin, just because he thought the boy recognized him, didn't really seem logical to me. Like, you go to a party with so many boys present, and weren't worried that someone might recognize him until the point he meets Amin at court.

Due to the above 4 reasons ,this book dropped from a 4 star one to a 3 star in my opinion ( )

An excellent and unusual storyline. DI Tom Thorne tries to find out if a young prisoner in a Young Offenders' Institute committed suicide and if not who killed him and why. The pressure is on though as the father of the dead boy is holding Sgt Helen Weeks hostage in his newsagents until Tom Thorne brings him details of his son's killer. In his quest to find the answers he needs, Thorne ignores procedure and protocol, coming under heavy pressure from colleagues and superiors alike as a consequence. Highly recommended. ( )

I thought this was quite good - a worthy addition to the series, if not, perhaps, the best of the bunch.

The setup seems a rather ho-hum affair: a shopkeeper suddenly snaps and shuts down his shop with two hostages held at gunpoint within. His price for their freedom: proof of his son's murder, not suicide, at a local Young Offenders' Institution. Tom Thorne to deliver.

At first, there appears to be little at stake, but the bodies do indeed begin to mount up, and the pacing is perfect.

What makes this especially stimulating reading, though, is its exposure of the casual corruption we imagine pervades the top of the British establishment, and what somebody else in a different context once called the banality of evil: it certainly is banal, but it is also, just as certainly, evil.

A novel seemed to start unpromisingly in fact gathers steam and powers towards a terrific climax. ( )

A first-rate mystery with interesting characters. Police officer Helen Weeks is taken hostage by a shopkeeper whose son, he is told, has committed suicide in prison. He is not convinced, and Detective Tom Thorne must find the truth, which turns out to be pretty twisted. Highly recommended! ( )