Mark Billingham: I couldn't write about the police the same after this horrifying crime

Would Mark Billingham ever kill off his fictional detective Tom Thorne? It’s a question that clearly keeps fans awake at night. But he chuckles when I suggest high cholesterol and heart disease would be far more likely culprits if the cop with the notoriously poor diet keeled over one day. “That’s right, or a dodgy curry,” he smiles.

We’re discussing mortality because his sensational new novel, What The Night Brings, opens with the appalling deaths of four police officers, killed by poisoned doughnuts left on their squad car with the message, “Thanks for everything you do!”

The uniforms are providing traffic control and support during the early-morning arrest of a suspected armed robber and it’s pure luck Thorne doesn’t snarf one himself. But is it a targeted assassination, or something even more sinister?

Either way, country music-loving cop Thorne, DI Nicola Tanner and police pathologist Phil Hendricks are soon drawn into one of their darkest investigations. No surprise then that Billingham’s 19th Thorne thriller – and his milestone 25th book in 25 years – takes place against the emotive backdrop of growing public anger at policing.

It’s something the author couldn’t ignore following the horrifying murder of Sarah Everard, 33, in March 2021 by a serving officer and subsequent revelations of bad apples in the ranks. “Sarah Everard was our George Floyd moment in terms of attitudes to the police,” explains the author, referencing the African-American’s 2020 death while under arrest in Minneapolis, which sparked the Black Lives Matter movement. “I don’t think you can write contemporary police procedurals, especially set in London, without addressing that.

“I’m not writing polemics, but I can’t ignore the fact there are enough officers on suspension at the moment to police a small town. You hear facts like that and you read that the Met has been pronounced institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic in an official report. I’m still trying to write a commercial crime novel, but that stuff is going on so I knew I wanted that to be front and centre of this book.

“Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing but admiration and respect for good coppers who do an incredibly difficult job the likes of you and I could never do when you need them. They’ve got to make massive life-or-death decisions in a fraction of a second. But the ones who abuse it, I’ve nothing but scorn and hatred for them.”

It was, Billingham admits, a book that made him “angry” to write. “You just think, ‘My God, is this really what’s happening?’ And you just start to do a bit of research. Not a crazy amount of research, but enough to make me very worked up doing it,” he continues.

“And I’ve only been this worked up once before, when I wrote Love Like Blood about honour killing in 2017. This time I was furious because it’s just horrible, absolutely horrendous. As I was writing it, I was thinking, ‘This could be a good book or a terrible book because I’m getting a bit emotionally involved’, but hopefully it’s worked out.”

In fact it’s a great novel, assisted perhaps by the fact Billingham decided to take a break from Thorne after 2022’s The Murder Book, kicking off his new Blackpool-set series featuring ballroom dancing cop Declan Miller (He’s currently writing the third Miller book). “I had an enormous amount of fun writing them, but I always knew it was just a break while I hit pause on the Thorne books,” he says.

“Some readers will always want another Thorne novel in the same way that they want another Reacher novel, or another Rebus novel, or another Roy Grace novel. But if you’re feeling a little bit jaded about a character or a series, that will come out. You can sense it. So it felt like a good place to do it after The Murder Book because a lot of things got resolved.

“When I stopped doing Thorne for the first standalone, people went, ‘No, we just want you to write Thorne’, But you can’t keep doing that – you’ve got to stay fresh.”

Billingham, 63, a former actor and stand-up comic who lives with his TV director wife Claire Winyard, and their two children in North London, exploded onto the scene in 2001 with Sleepyhead, followed by Scaredy Cat a year later. Both had killer hooks and launched him as one of the leading lights of the UK crime writing fraternity.

“You can’t rely on having a brilliant hook every year. Don’t get me wrong, you think of a great twist or a great hook, and that’s a great day at the office,” he says. “But it’s got to be about the characters developing and creating a character readers want to spend time and engage with even after 25 years.”

Which is what brings us to the proverbial elephant in the room – a “double whammy of shocks” so staggering Billingham has felt compelled to write a brief afterword appealing to readers to keep it to themselves and avoid posting any spoilers. Choosing his words carefully, he explains: “Once I had that opening – the uniforms being poisoned – I knew that what would emerge was that there was an arch manipulator protecting rapist officers, facilitating their crimes, then hiding evidence.

“So it starts to emerge it’s got to be a senior officer and Thorne doesn’t know who he can trust. So there’s a big reveal at the end and then a shock – and then an extra shock a chapter later, which is why it’s the first time I’ve had to write a little note in the back asking readers to keep it to themselves.”

Even for a veteran writer, it wasn’t easy to turn things on their head quite so dramatically. “At the end of this book, I want readers to be shocked and saddened, but also to feel that’s it’s been a fulfilling read; that there’s nothing that’s going to leave them irritated or unsatisfied by,” he continues. “That’s the challenge we all have because when you’re dealing with police issues and crime, there’s very rarely a neat ending.

“It’s not about tying up every loose end, because often ‘justice’ is a grey area and there’s at least one example of that at the end of this book, in that not everyone gets what’s coming to them.”

He pauses: “I’d made this decision about who my villain was going to be. It was quite scary, but I was talking to a colleague, Luca Veste, and he said, ‘You’ve got to do it!’ That gave me faith. But I was worried about what readers would think – I’m still worried.”

How does Billingham feel now? “Ask me again in a fortnight when the book’s out,” he sighs. Having been involved in the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival since day one, Billingham remains on the organising committee. Now in its 21st year, he will be a special guest in Harrogate next month, interviewed by programming chair Mick Herron.

“It’s one of the highlights of the year for every crime writer,” he enthuses. “We’ve got an amazing line up of authors and events and panels.”

The guitar player will also be “murdering songs for fun” with his fellow Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, author-rock stars Val McDermid, Chris Brookmyre, Doug Johnstone, Stuart Neville and Veste, making their return with a Saturday night show. Billingham is, he admits, not a planner when it comes to writing. Neither does he subscribe to the idea that the characters inhabit his head and talk to him.

“I mean I’m the one doing the typing, it’s all coming out of my head,” he chuckles. “But the advantage of not planning too much out is that you can just be walking the dog and go, ‘Oh I know, what about…?’ With Rabbit Hole, my most recent standalone, the twist at the end didn’t come to me until after I’d delivered the book.

“Then I thought, ‘Oh, hang on a minute’, and I quickly called my editor and asked for it back!” The first two Thorne books were adapted by Sky back in 2010 starring David Morrissey as Thorne. While well-received by fans and critics, changes at the channel meant the series was dropped. Fans are ever hopeful of a TV reboot. Billingham sighs: “It’s always there in the background but you’ve just got to get on with things.

“But I’d love to see it rebooted in the way they’ve just done with [Ian Rankin’s] Rebus, which I think worked really well. I’m never going to say no to anything, but I’m not holding my breath about any of those things.”

Did Billingham ever think he’d enjoy a 25-year-and-counting career from his books?

“You can’t really think that far ahead, because you’ve got a deal that’s usually for two books. And even then, you know that if they don’t do alright, that’s probably all you’re going to get. So the thought I’d still be writing, let alone writing about Tom Thorne, never occurred to me.

“Even though I’ve never got a specific ending in mind, I know how I want the reader to feel at the end of it. I know the taste I want to leave in the reader’s mouth.”

“It feels like I’ve been doing it for about five minutes, but I know I’ve been doing it a long time when I look at all those books on the shelf. “And then I’ll read Michael Connelly’s 40th book or Val McDermid’s 40th or Ian Rankin’s 30th and remember that there are actually plenty of people who’ve been doing it for even longer.”

What’s the secret of keeping the quality up then? “I wish I knew. You’ve just got to write the sort of book you’d like to read,” says Billingham. “You’ve got to have that ambition. I’m a reader first and foremost, and I write as a reader, or with an invisible reader looking over my shoulder.

Would he ever walk away from it all? “I don’t know what the cut-off point is or when it will arrive. It takes a lot to do what Lee Child did and simply walk away. That’s incredibly brave and principled.

“Personally, I think that I’ve still got something to say and compelling stories to write and as long as I feel like that and readers want me to keep going, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

“So, I’ve got no immediate plans to end it but, having said that, the next Thorne book will be the 20th, and that’s a nice round number…” He tails off. It’s another Billingham cliffhanger.

• What The Night Brings by Mark Billingham (Sphere, £22) is out now. Mark will be appearing at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate from July 17 to 20. Visit harrogateinternationalfestivals.com for tickets and information