Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
Conjuring up a new foe, author Susan Hill displays something altogether more frightening than ever before with this second installment in the Simon Serrailler franchise. Creating characters that are so intensely relatable as well makes it far more terrifying as the monster seems a lot more real and close to home than it would be otherwise. As Serrailler gets more involved with the community, so to does the reader becoming more immersed in this every evolving world she has created. Featuring an in-depth look at the psychology of evil, it takes a very complex set of themes and makes them highly accessible to a wide ranging audience. Will Simon Serrailler manage to find whoever is committing these crimes throughout the community before it’s too late? Can he manage whilst avoiding any danger that might potentially befall him during his investigation? What will become of him as he attempts to find out who is the pure in heart? The Simon Serrailler Series Which is this author's great strength - to forge a story which, on its surface, is another mystery featuring a likeable detective, with all his staff about him. You follow the clues along with them, with diverting asides into some of the individual's separate lives. But with Ms. Hill, as is the case with similar writers, Ruth Rendell and PD James, you also delve into the deep issues of mind, heart, family, love, life, and 'what's it all about?'
This time, elderly ladies are being bumped off in a particularly nasty way in their own homes, in crimes that seem awfully similar to an earlier case in Yorkshire. Serrailler's problem is that the killer has apparently vanished, leaving no traces behind him. Something's definitely rotten in the state of Special Operations... it's so miserable and depressing. Now, the concept of the police not capturing the criminal isn't necessarily a problem. But it does make what on the surface appeared to be an updated Christie-style into an extremely morbid and pessimistic tale. Cat, who seems to be working herself to the bone just as much as she did when she was an NHS GP, handily has a poor 'deserving' private client to focus on, whose care is funded by an anonymous donor. As ever, she is the only competent, caring doctor in the book and is surprised when the overworked worn down nurses at the hospital don't appreciate her pointing out all the things they are doing wrong. Then there's Simon (the author is clearly in love with him, despite the faults she gives him), who should be disciplined for his treatment of Fern (in this book - I can no longer recall what happened in the last one). If I were Rachel I would run a mile. Finally, the author credits her proof-reader, but between them they seem to share the view that any number of ideas and phrases can be joined together in a single sentence with the use of commas. I ended up skimming this - partly because the descriptions of recruitment of vulnerable children to county lines gangs was upsetting, and partly because I find Cat and Simon extremely annoying.I feel like I need to start by saying I've read all the books in this series and I continue to persevere with them despite enjoying them less and less. This book sees Simon Serailler involves in a heroin overdose that could be murder and an investigation into County Lines drug activity. Against this we also catch up with Cat and her family. In the usual style everyone has something alcoholic in their hand at every opportunity and there is plenty of pain and suffering of a character we have become invested in. There are also a number of sub-plots that don't interact with each other at all. There's 'world building' and then there's just padding. On the Face of It, broadcast 1975; published in Act 1, edited by David Self and Ray Speakman, London, Hutchinson, 1979 By the time she took her A levels, she had already written her first novel, The Enclosure, which was published by Hutchinson in her first year at university. [7]
Hill revisits old characters from her previous outing, The Betrayal of Trust, but briefly. Jocelyn Forbes, the woman living with motor neurone disease, or MND, is still alive, but barely, and Hill seems to have a keen interest in MND and its debilitating affects on a person's body. Also, Rachel Wyatt and Simon Serrailler's rendezvous continues in the latest mystery, and though the relationship adds nothing to the meat of the main story, Hill creates interesting characters that her readers care about and hope to revisit in future stories. The whole thing is, of course, extremely well written in that way Susan Hill has of crafting elegant, readable prose which never draws attention to itself but carries the reader along beautifully. The story, too, is a timely one and in many ways well done; the stories of the children involved and of the effects on their families are vivid and gripping, for example. However, I did find the policing aspect just a little clunky and preachy; at one point the Chief Constable gives a long and rather sententious speech to his officers, after which, one comments, “Didn’t have the chief down for a rallying-cry-before-battle sort of guy, did you?” Well, no I didn’t – and he was all the better for it. Serrailler himself sounds a bit like a politician with a pre-written answer at times, too, and I’ve come to expect better from Susan Hill. This second novel in the Simon Serrailler series is more loosely written than the first, a trend that continues through the other books I’ve read in this series. The police procedural—in this instance a case of child abduction—proceeds alongside the lives of the Serrailler/Deerbon families, a bit like flipping between a soap opera and a detective mystery on TV. In addition, Hill starts using a technique she often employs later, that of introducing a seemingly unrelated subplot that you can easily guess is going to tie into the mystery at some point. I’d read the next novel as a standalone a few years ago, so I knew the biggest reveal, but I still enjoyed listening to the story unfold in Steven Pacey’s well-paced narration.The following description made me laugh out loud, "He was bald, having shaved his head so often the hair had eventually abandoned hope." Simon is on vacation in Venice, sketching while sitting in a cemetery, when his father calls him home because his younger sister, Martha, is ill and may not survive. In a separate plot, a young boy has been abducted. In a third, a woman who loves Simon is trying to find out why he wants nothing more to do with her. And there is an ex-con trying to do the right thing and go straight. This is only a brief description of some of what’s happening in this book. Every character is well drawn. However, for the most part I thoroughly enjoyed the rambling middle class family saga and Stephen Pacey’s brilliant narration.
It’s January and we’re deep in winters clutches in Lafferton. A heroin overdose of a young man in a rundown flat above a Chinese pharmacy in Starly leads Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Serrailler and his team into a county lines inquiry. Vulnerable children like eleven year old Brooklyn (Brookie) Roper are targeted and groomed. Meanwhile, Simon’s sister Cat Deerbon now married to Chief Constable Kieron Bright has her own issues with patients and personal family worries especially with her son Sam who is in medical training.This was very disappointing to me in a lot of ways. We see a lot more of Simon Serrailler in this second book in the series but he is not very likable other than his love for his sister Martha.
It's like your brain's bursting. It doesn't happen all at once, it builds up. And then your brain's going to burst until you do something about it. You do it. You have to do it. Then it's all right again for a bit, 'til it starts again." Just as the story was coming to a head, things came to an abrupt end with a toe-curling Mills and Boon flourish. Initial investigations discover that the mysterious "sign" left on the body was the calling card of a suspect who was charged with several murders in the northwest of the country, tried but acquitted on the grounds of insufficient evidence. All indications suggest that this person has simply vanished. Or is he right under their noses? Simon Serrailler is obliged to make delve deeper and scratch out answers, This is an intriguing premise, all too believable. As ever with Hill’s novels, this is efficient and chilling. She introduces us to prospective villains, each seems a little questionable: but are we being unfair, reading something into signs that don’t exist, generalising, making assumptions? In parallel with the introduction of prospective villains, we are also shown prospective victims.The book opens with a court scene where a murderer manages to walk free due to some kind of legal mismanagement. He is unable to rejoin society as he would probably be lynched, so he is set up with an entirely new identity and moved to another town. Years later when the same kind of murders start again Simon and his team find themselves looking for a man who does not exist anymore. Disclaimer: If this book ever gets published, (during my lifetime) I will happily read it and retract this 'review' for a real one. Whatever the reason, the sudden end was jarring, partly because so much time had been spent on random episodes concerning a sprained knee and an injured dog. Iris is a bereaved elderly lady who is the next to disappear. She was seeking comfort in spiritual meetings before disappeared. Not a book for those who want every - or most - issues resolved (fixed, solved, finalized) in their mystery reading. Ms. Hill comes closest to writing fiction which is true-to-the-way-things-really-are, IMO. Police are often flummoxed, frustrated, exasperated and ultimately have to send certain cases to bed. This is...now in spoiler territory...
Great Deal 
New Comment