This blog tour is taking place to commemorate the reissue of the Simon Serrailler series to celebrate twenty years since they began, and as a result they’ve all received swanky new covers. The series currently runs to eleven books, and has sold over a million copies – that’s 900,000 each, approximately. Impressive! And here’s the new look books, with apologies for the low resolution (the above image is unfortunately the old one, which is all that is displayed on Amazon at present):
Of course, this isn’t Susan Hill’s only work. She’s well-known for books such as The Woman In Black and Mrs de Winter, as well as many others – deliciously spooky stuff, and arguably even more successful than this series, especially after the film of The Woman In Black, starring Daniel Radcliffe, was well received. I’m pretty sure there was a successful stage adaptation, too.
But let’s look at the Simon Serrailler series, in particular The Shadows In The Street. I’m somewhat embarrassed this is the first book in this series I’ve read, particularly as I already possess the majority of them! Chronologically, this is the fifth in the series. But no matter, the book reads perfectly well as a standalone, with subtle information dropped in about previous characters so you can pick up on the Serrailler family dynamic. They all have a part to play: Simon’s sister Cat is a local GP, and his father Richard a retired doctor. He’s recently remarried to his late friend’s widow, and Cat has became great friends with her new stepmother Judith, who provides babysitting and someone to lean on for her, whose husband died of a brain tumour, leaving her with three young children. Simon, however, has yet to fully accept his father’s remarriage, which he felt was hasty and disrespectful to his mother’s memory. Father and son have a somewhat prickly relationship, with Richard disparaging about his son’s highly successful police career – he’s a DCI – as he clearly feels he should have went into medicine, like the rest of the family.
So that’s the main characters – now to the setting, an imaginary English cathedral city called Lafferton. The cathedral plays a big part in the book, as Cat is a member of the choir and a regular attendee at services. Simon’s bachelor flat is in the cathedral’s close. The book begins not long after the arrival of a new Dean, Stephen Webber, and his wife Ruth, who are determined to drastically modernise the cathedral, against the wishes of much of the congregation. He brings with him Canon Miles Hurley, an old friend who is very much his shoulder to lean on – a reassuring presence, and who’s willing to take services when the Dean has other preoccupations, of which we learn more about as the book progresses.
So what, then, is the crime? Well, someone is targeting the prostitutes of Lafferton, many of whom we get to know throughout the book: Abi, her best friend Hayley, Marie…all will be touched by the presence of a killer on the streets hunting them down. After three attacks, with one surviving but being very ill, the prostitutes have moved to a different area, and another woman is murdered in the previous red light district by the canal – just a normal family woman, with no links to prostitution. The killer is clearly a misogynist, and is out of control. Who’s next? And who is this monster?
It’s an uphill battle for Simon and his team, the transactions involved (and the crimes) taking place, as the apt title suggests, in “the shadows in the street”, away from the protective eye of CCTV. The victims too are reluctant to engage with any authority figures, as many are mothers and fear the involvement of social services in their lives. They are people on the fringes of society, unnoticed by many, looked down upon by others. But they are as of deserving of protection, and ultimately justice, as any other citizen.
As Simon and the other members on the investigation scrabble for a clue, any clue, as to the killer’s identity, it becomes evident that every woman in Lafferton is in danger…and that next time, the victim could be one of their wives, mothers, sisters, or daughters.
Hugely gripping, with a great, well-developed cast – I’d expect no less from a writer of this pedigree – this book makes me even more determined to finally work my way through the Serrailler series. If you enjoy a gripping, well-written police procedural, you really could not be in safer hands than those of the multi-talented Susan Hill. I raced through it.
Final verdict: Bravo! I absolutely tore through this – not to be missed!
With thanks to Vintage Books for the blog tour invitation and the ARC. This has not affected my opinion, and this is an honest review.
Author Susan Hill
BLURB: Two local prostitutes are found brutally strangled. Serrailler is called back urgently from his sabbatical but by the time he reaches Lafferton another girl has vanished. Then the wife of the Dean at the Cathedral goes missing – has the killer widened their net or is there more than one murderer at large?
crimeworm 