London’s organised-crime underworld, in all its diversity and brutality, is the setting for this edgy contemporary thriller. A serial killer who leaves a nasty mark on his victims is the latest weapon in a turf war between criminal gangs. DI Tom Thorne, young but jaded and with a nice line in sardonic put-downs, discovers a link from these crimes to an incident 20 years ago when a young girl was badly burnt in a school playground. It’s a satisfyingly complex plot and is vigorously read by Lloyd Pack. An underlying mood of real tragedy, provided by the burnt girl’s diaries, read by Landau, is a counterpoint to the “professional” violence of the crimes.
(Time Warner £14.99 CDs, 6 hours, abridged)
SPLIT SECOND
by David Baldacci
read by Damian Lewis
The slick kidnapping of a US presidential candidate from a funeral home (the perpetrators don’t do anything so predictable as stash their victim in a coffin) looks bad for Secret Service agent Michelle Maxwell: she was in charge of security for the abducted man. She teams up with Sean King — a disgraced agent who had failed to stop the bullet that killed a presidential hopeful he had been guarding eight years earlier — and the pair embark on a gloriously complicated investigation. What really happened eight years ago? What the hell is going on now? Witnesses and key players are bumped off left, right and centre as the maverick agents uncover murky, conspiratorial truths. Fast and fun.
(Macmillan £10.99 CDs, 3 hours, 30 minutes, abridged)