Ray Holt launders money for a Manchester criminal gang. He is also stealing from them – and has talked himself into believing that makes him the hero.

When discovery becomes inevitable, Holt's solution is Knott: a hitman found via a business card on a pub toilet floor, professional in the way that a blunt instrument is professional, and not entirely sane.

What follows is a darkly comic, pitilessly plotted thriller about a man who believes he is one smart move ahead of everyone around him – and the catastrophic cost of being wrong. Sharp, funny, and genuinely unsettling, Darker with the Day confirms Trevor Mark Thomas as one of the most distinctive voices in British crime fiction and Northern Noir's most compelling stylist.

Everyone has a plan. Ray Holt has a hitman.

(on previous work) (On The Bothy) An absorbing debut – delightfully taut – a tender, gruesome villain at its heart.



(on previous work) (On Dry Cleaning) Taut and pacy … Thomas turning up the temperature dial yet further as we reach the climax.



(on previous work) (On Dry Cleaning) A seriously well-paced, atmospheric crime drama, completely unlike anything else I've read this year.



(on previous work) (On The Bothy) Lean, sharp writing supports a striking talent for uncovering the emotional lives of people who are determined not to have any emotions.



(on previous work) (On The Bothy) Grim northern realism painted with heart and humour.



(on previous work) (On The Bothy) Horribly engrossing: a blackly comic gangster horror … Its cast of strangely ambivalent villains will linger in your mind. weniger anzeigen expand_less