It's ludicrously expensive, filthy and crime ridden, but when you stand on Waterloo Bridge and look up and down the river … it's almost impossible not to have a love-hate relationship with the place. "There is all the wonderful tourist stuff, but it is also a city of ghosts and of contrasts. He says that, from the beginning, the Thorne books were about his often troubled detective's relationship with an often troubled city. An increasingly prominent figure in the crime-writing world, he was this year's chair of the annual gathering of the clans at the Harrogate crime festival, and was the first writer to win the Theakston's best crime novel of the year prize twice his DI Tom Thorne has been portrayed on TV by David Morrissey. Since moving from acting and stand-up comedy to crime writing with his 2001 debut Sleepyhead, Billingham has written 11 novels, which have met with both commercial and critical success. Although without taking anything away, you should probably also never discount the fact that blood does look particularly good against snow." Part of the reason why Scandinavian crime has been so popular is the landscape. Places such as Edinburgh or Oxford or LA seemed to have stronger identities. When I began to write I was surprised at how little London had been used in crime fiction. "And as I've always believed that location is a character, it seemed a natural thing to do. "But I now do know that part of Florida pretty well," Billingham explains.
That Mark Billingham's latest novel, Rush of Blood, is partly set in the Florida resort town where he has owned a holiday home for the last few years is likewise testament to the success of a career that has previously been associated with the up-close study of the meaner streets of London. I t was said that you could track the upward trajectory of the late Douglas Adams's career by how quickly his jokes changed from laughing at the absurdities of having no money to laughing at the absurdities of having lunch with his accountants.
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