X marks the spot - and when that spot is a corpse's naked back and the X is carved in blood, DI Tom Thorne is in no doubt that the dead man is the latest victim of a particularly vicious contract killer. It's morbid and messy - but it's a mystery with plenty of clues. This is turf warfare between North London gangs. Organised crime boss Billy Ryan is moving into someone else's patch, and that someone is not best pleased.

Thorne's already got plenty on his plate when he agrees to help out ex-DCI Carol Chamberlain, frantically raking through the ashes of an old case that has come back to haunt her. When schoolgirl Jessica Clarke was turned into a human torch twenty years ago, it made horrific headlines. But now there's something worrying in the small print: Gordon Rooker, the man Carol put away for the crime, is up for possible release, and it seems there's a copycat at large. Or perhaps it's someone trying to 'right' a few wrongs. For Jessica Clarke was the victim of mistaken identity. The intended target was the daughter of a gangland boss, a woman who would later grow up and marry a man named Billy Ryan...

For Thorne, what starts as a tenous link becomes two pieces of the same puzzle. Past and present gradually fuse together to form a new, and very nasty, riddle. One that involves more killings, protection rackets, human cargoes, and a murderous family with no values - except gain at any price. And when an X is carved on his front dorr, Tom Thorne knows that the smouldering embers of a long-dead case are about to erupt into flames...

The fourth Tom Thorne novel, The Burning Girl blazes a trail through territory now marked with the unique Billingham twist. Like the best of both British and American crime writing, the author delivers a plot coiled into tautness, punches you don't see coming, and characters who will remain seared into the memory long after the heart-stopping finale...