Sleepyhead Audiobook By Mark Billingham cover art

Sleepyhead

Thomas Thorne, Book 1

 Preview

$0.00 for first 30 days

Try for $0.00
Access a growing selection of included Audible Originals, audiobooks, and podcasts.
You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
Audible Plus auto-renews for $7.95/mo after 30 days. Upgrade or cancel anytime.

Sleepyhead

By: Mark Billingham
Narrated by: Simon Prebble
Try for $0.00

$7.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $21.04

Buy for $21.04

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

Alison Willetts is unlucky to be alive. She has survived a stroke, deliberately induced by a skilful manipulation of pressure points on the head and neck. She can see, hear and feel and is aware of everything going on around her, but is completely unable to move or communicate. Her condition is called Locked-In Syndrome.

In leaving Alison Willetts alive, the police believe the killer made his first mistake.

Then D.I. Tom Thorne discovers the horrifying truth; it isn't Alison who is the mistake, it's the three women already dead. "An appropriate margin of error" is how their killer dismisses them, and Thorne knows they are unlikely to be the last. For the killer is smart, and he's getting his kicks out of toying with Thorne as much as he is pursuing his sick fantasy. Thorne knows immediately he's not going to catch the killer with simple procedure. But with little more than gut instinct and circumstantial evidence to damn his chief suspect, anesthetist Jeremy Bishop, his pursuit of him is soon bordering on the unprofessional. Especially considering his involvement with Anne Coburn, Alison's doctor and Jeremy's close friend.

©2001 Original material 2001 Mark Billingham. Recorded by arrangement with Atlantic Monthly Press, a division of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. (P)2013 2013 HighBridge Company Suspense Thriller & Suspense Fiction

Critic reviews

'Who would have thought a stand-up comedian could write a British police procedural as good as those produced by crime queens Elizabeth George and Ruth Rendell?" ( USA Today)
"A terrifically stylish debut novel." ( The Independent On Sunday)
Creative Plot • Multiple Perspectives • Magical Narration • Dark Intensity • Unexpected Twists • Masterful Performance
Highly rated for:
All stars
Most relevant  
discovered this aithor through the poisoned pen bookstore in scottsdale.
i enjoyed it but had difficulty following it at times, this might not be a problem in the print edition

a new author for me

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I enjoyed the story but the plot line lost me in the middle and the resolution didn’t totally explain the killers motivations.

Unpredictable twist

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
it is good to discover a 'new author,

took some time to get used to the narrators voice selected for Alison. it sounded manly. good story but I figured the perpetrator half way through the book

Billingham discovered

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Excellent story. Real page turner. Some unrealistic bits at the end (and I guessed the killer). Especially enjoyed Alison's 1st person accounts. Narrator is fantastic!

Gripping!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I was skeptical about the book. I recently got into murder mystery books but find them often boring as I can guess the killer with 99% accuracy by chapter 4.....this book however just blew my perfect record. first it was this person, then nope, had to be that one, then WHAM..... surprise ... least one you expect.

I loved the way the author talked from different view points, from Thorne, the killer, Alice, Anne...all gave her insight and depth to the book. and yes...I sobbed at the end of the book.

Simon prebble....the man is officially on my bucket list to meet. his narrations are beyond amazing, from this book, to Dickens and Poe, to some of the most erotic scenes in a Stephanie laurens book, the man can capture and hold. I am fairly sure that if the US Constitution were to be read by him, at least 80% of us USA citizens would be able to recite it just from having listened to HIM read it.

wow! amazing book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I knowingly started with book one in case this is a series I want to continue reading. I haven’t decided if I’ll move on to book 2. I’m ambivalent right now. The overall story was good but I found myself not liking the protagonist much. Strange to feel this way because I think he was after justice but I didn’t like his methods and I found him to be quite egotistical. I usually like the star of the story more than I did here. So I’ll sit on this one a while and see if I’m interested in seeing if this character changes in future stories.

My first Tom Thorn

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The book is good, the story is good but then again, when Simon Prebble narrates, I could listen to the DMV booklet or the medical encyclopedia. He is that good. Of course there is George Guidall and Simon Vance and John Lee and they are all awesome narrators but Simon Prebble? He is magical and, I found out, always narrates good to excellent books. So you can't go wrong choosing one of the hundreds of stories he has narrated.
Thank you for them all, Simon Prebble.

Simon Prebble, the master narrator

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This was a great story, revolving around just a few main characters. Two were men, one was an adult woman, and one was a young woman with locked-in syndrome. It was impossible to tell who was speaking by the voice used or the transition between voices!!! This is a major flaw in understanding the plot. Although I buy the Kindle version as well as the Audible, I rarely MUST refer to the Kindle one. This time it was necessary. I'm going to see if the Audible is still refundable. Such a handicap on an otherwise enjoyable mystery.

Great story, poor narrator

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Tom Thorne is a detective who is on the case of the strange murders of several women, only to quickly learn that the murders were not deliberate but accidental. The women were not intended to be murdered--but rather to have been robbed of their ability to have any control over their bodies or actions--and live only in their minds. The suspect believes this would provide the ability to have ultimate power over them. One woman has survived (as intended by the suspect), in a neurological state of stroke--living in the horror of awareness of everything, but inability to communicate what is in her thoughts and unable to move at all.

Detective Thorne believes he knows who has sufficient medical knowledge to know exactly how to manipulate this physical state in a person--and that the women who died were just his experiments on the way toward perfecting this actual goal. But he is unable to convince anyone around him of his theory--so has to go it alone.

One interesting thing about this book, is that the story is told through the perspective of different characters--including the mute woman who lies helplessly in her bed (her thoughts are spoken for her by the author). This keeps the story having variety which is important as there are actually fewer characters overall than in many mysteries where there are scads of possible suspects.

This book is a good bit beyond my usual comfort level--I listened at the suggestion of a friend who had heard about the series. I found it a bit uncomfortable in many places--not quite creepy, but edgy, tense writing. Much of the story is spent on developing the characters, which heightens the intensity of it all. I think many people would greatly like this--I did, from the writing (and narration) standpoint, despite that it's style and darkness are not my usual cup of tea. I would recommend for those who enjoy stories on the dark side.

Sort of a dark tale

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I mean, I didn't hate it? The frequent character changes with no warning made it difficult to really get into this one. I had figured out who done it about a third of the way through.

A hard to pin down plot

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews