Mark Billingham - Lazy Bones

review by showhost
I have struggled with this book and at one time decided to give it up but it made me feel I had failed so I carried on. I am in the minority on my non-enthusiasm for this book.
The story jumps around, which a lot do, but this was hard to keep up with and an awful lot of characters. Some of the information was totally useless to the story, the padding out bits. I think the author was making small talk with them and maybe thought it would endear the characters to us but for me it didn't work.
It starts off. With a man, who has just come out of prison for rape, found dead in a sleazy London hotel room. He is naked his head covered in a hood and his hands handcuffed and a blue noose around his neck.
We jump then to a husband who is hanging himself after he has murdered his wife. But his suicide is witnessed by his children.
When a second sex offender suffers the same fate DI Tom Thorne realises they have a murderer with a score to settle.
A third sex offender is found murdered and as yet unsolved clues drive on DI Thorne and his team. They are searching for the young children who witnessed their fathers suicide, thirty years ago but they seem to have vanished.
I found myself frustrated that the police hadn't got photos of the children immediately from the foster parents instead of letting them ferret around for them over a couple of days! The fact that the paragraphs all followed on even when the subject matter, year and subject/s had completely changed made it hard to keep up with; different scenes running in to each other without any break. Normally there is a definite break to the page when this happens.
For me it was a long drawn out story but which picked up interest at the end.