I have read the first four Serailler novels and, like most of Susan Hill's work, the book itself is good. However, there are certain aspects of it that I felt could have been a lot better. The hero cop, who doesn't really seem to do much police work, is a complete tosser and behaves awfully. He acts like a spolt brat for most of the time and the less said about his attitude to women, the better. I found it hard to take to him. My biggest problem, though, is the way Hill creates these interesting sub-plots but then does not take them anywhere. What was the point of the whole Helen-Phil story? Who was the man that attacked and killed Jane's mother? Why was he taken into care? What happened to him there to make him that way? What was the point of the whole Max and Lizzie Jameson story? Other then simply to introduce Jane to Simon. And what the hell happened to Ed Slaitholme the child killer? Hill never finished that and that was book 2.
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