Kindle British & Irish Mystery Book Club discussion

Sleepyhead, by Mark Billingham

"It's rare for a young woman to die from a stroke and when three such deaths occur in short order it starts to look like an epidemic. Then a sharp pathologist notices traces of benzodiazepine in one of the victim's blood samples and just traceable damage to the ligaments in her neck, and their cause of death is changed from 'natural' to murder.The police aren't making much progress in their hunt for the killer until he appears to make a mistake: Alison Willetts is found alive and D.I. Tom Thorne believes the murderer has made a mistake, which ought to allow them to get on his tracks. But it was the others who were his mistakes: he doesn't want to take life, he just wants to put people into a state where they cannot move, cannot talk, cannot do anything but think.When Thorne, helped by the neurologist looking after Alison, starts to realise what he is up against he knows the case is not going to be solved by normal methods - before he can find out who did it he has to understand why he's doing it."

Link to Book on Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3YnBLjn
Discussion Leader: David Gooch

Read this a good few years ago.
Started again as book read and really enjoying it. Just over half way though now.

It was okay.
Can't help feeling the crimes were less important to the author than filling out the character and backstory of the detective.

Chris, I understand how you reacted to the book Sleepyhead. The author didn't want to distract us from thinking Thorne was correct about his conviction of who had done the dirty deeds. Looking back, I'm not certain the author gave us clues enough to figure out who did the crimes. I was surprised and not fully convinced that the murderer could have picked up such an esoteric technique with so little medical training. Since so many of his victims died, perhaps he read about the technique but really wasn't good at doing it. Alison must have been a fluke. I was sorry that nothing could be done to reverse the killer's actions, as she was a character who deserved to live a normal life. This really did seem to be Thorne's story, I agree. I didn't find him entirely admirable, to be polite, but I also didn't care for the man Thorne thought was the villain. I liked Alison better than any other character.