Buried (2007)

In Buried, Mark Billingham's sixth Tom Thorne procedural, the persnickety British detective unenthusiastically slogs through a no-ransom, no-leads kidnapping. When the snatching spawns a double murder, the body count-loving Thorne perks up and blows through two other related — and dizzingly tangled — cases in a matter of days. Chugging through unnecessary back story about London police bureaucracy, this hard-boiled tale stumbles along at first, haphazardly changing narrators. Billingham's more personal, less technical parts — such as details of the victim's plight (''like a stillborn baby in a big man's coffin'') and a clumsy, tense romance for Thorne — prop up an otherwise confusing crime drama. C+