Rush of Blood: Mark Billingham

In Mark Billingham’s suspenseful crime novel, Rush of Blood, three British couples meet at a Florida resort, and in spite of the fact they are all quite different, they spend their days and evenings together on the beach, at the mall and at various bars and restaurants. Just as the holiday concludes, Amber, a young girl from Georgia who is also staying at the resort with her mother disappears. While the mother frantically looks for her child, the three couples lounge by the pool; it’s their last day. Why should they spend it chasing after a girl who was a bit of a nuisance to the holidaymakers?

The three couples return to their lives in England while the search for Amber rages on in their absence. Then her body is found and a murder investigation begins. In Florida, the investigation is headed by Detective Jeffrey Gardner,  and for the purposes of tying up loose ends, he asks the British police for some follow-up information from the three couples. Trainee Detective Constable Jenny Quinlan is assigned to the task as it’s considered a very minor job, but Jenny doesn’t see it that way; she takes it seriously. Then when another girl similar to Amber goes missing in Kent, it seems that the six holiday makers have moved from being witnesses to being suspects.

Mark Billingham takes us into the lives of the three couples: the obnoxious Ed whose job in the publishing industry is in a downward spiral and his teacher wife, Sue. Then there’s builder Barry and his second wife Angie. Finally there’s would-be actress/writer Marina and her boyfriend Dave–a very mismatched couple.

When the three couples parted ways in Florida, there were some airy promises made about exchanging e-mails and keeping in touch. Angie is the one who pushes keeping the connection almost as though the unsolved crime leaves unfinished business between them. The novel goes back and forth between the couples and the three dinners they have together back in Britain, and we view the “Sarasota Six”  as they see themselves but also as they are seen by others. Ed, with his constant sexual innuendos, is clearly the alpha male, and Dave’s fascination with crime is supposed to be seen as creepy (we crime readers can understand), but the relationships between the women are not so easy to define. TDC Quinlan finds them all a bit weird

Barry Finnegan was clearly capable of snapping without much provocation. Ed Dunning was a sleazebag and Dave Cullen was just downright creepy.

Some chapters are also told by the killer, and of course we try to guess the masked identity. I loved the novel’s premise of the holiday that goes wrong and the plot structure which shows the couples trying to sink back into normalcy but that happy state evades them. The relationships between the couples are well done and highlight the competitiveness through the dinners. The weakness for this reader resides in the way that it seems fairly obvious, through the process of elmination, who the killer is. The plot breadcrumbs to the solution were so obvious that I knew it couldn’t be that simple and guessed the identity of the killer fairly early on.

Luck and lies then, that’s about the size of it. The other thing, the ‘why’, well that’s not really for me to say, is it? Anyway, I’m not sure I could put it into words that made sense and how could anybody? Whatever it is that makes your blood race and puts your hands where you know they really shouldn’t be.

The thing that opens the cage. 

Here’s Cleo’s review.

Review copy