The Dying Hours by Mark Billingham

 

After the disastrous way his last case ended, DI Tom Thorne has been removed from the Murder Squad and reassigned to a different police station and job.  He now heads up the police on the street and goes there himself most nights.  It is a demotion and he feels it deeply.  The only thing that seems to be going well is his new relationship with Helen, who is also a police officer and her young son, Alfie.

Thorne notices that there are an unusual number of suicides among the elderly in his district and the methods chosen are unnecessarily brutal.  What is causing the rise?  Thorne suspects that these are actually clever murders but his new superiors think he is just overly suspicious due to his past assignments and his desire to be back solving murders.  Then Thorne discovers a connection between the victims no one else had noticed and using his friends of many years as resources, sets out to solve the case by himself.

This is the eleventh Tom Thorne novel.  As always, once Thorne gets the bit in his teeth, there is no reining him in.  He is obsessive about the case and willing to put his friends in danger of their jobs as he uses them to find the answers he is sure are out there.  I loved the interaction between Thorne and Alfie and hope this relationship with Helen and her son continues.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.