Customer Reviews

The Betrayal of Trust: Simon Serrailler Book 6 (Simon Serrailler 6)

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

So far I've really enjoyed this series of books, but I'm starting to wonder whether Susan Hill's run out of steam a bit with Simon Serrailler. There were several points in the novel where I thought "Hang on, no-one would really react like that, surely?" because purely in terms of the personal relationships within the sainted Serrailler family, there were lots of things that didn't really add up. I must say I really didn't understand why Cat (Simon's saintly sister) was extremely angry with him for most of the first half of the book, apparently because he forgot to call her and tell her he couldn't make lunch at her house. Apart from anything else, it must have happened before, he's a senior police officer for goodness' sake. And then there was the bizarre stuff about his stepmother and father falling out over the fact that his (once again saintly) mother gave his sister a lethal injection years ago; the stepmother's reaction to it was very strange indeed. In every single one of these books Simon has told everyone that his father was a bully ("he bullied us, he bullied my mother. Don't let him bully you too... ") but no-one has ever given a convincing account of this "bullying" behaviour, and in this novel, the act of telling his new wife about the actions of his former one seemed to me to be an attempt by the father to explain to her a bit more about the family, and I just couldn't understand quite why it was supposed to be so upsetting for her. I didn't like the "device" which enabled Simon to fall head over heels in love with a married woman, either. It was much too "clever" and not at all convincing. Has anyone ever fallen in love with someone they were seated next to at a Lord Lieutenant's bi-annual Dinner? No, I didn't think so.
Oh, and by the way, no contemporary fifteen year-old boy (however saintly) would ever read "What Ho Jeeves" instead of doing his homework.

I have to take issue with the Daily Mail reviewer's verdict that forms the first line of Amazon's product description. This is a "fearless examination" of terminal illness, but it is a wholly unsatisfactory crime story.

I'm not going to summarise the plot - that's been admirably done by other reviewers - other than to say Susan Hill certainly tackles senescence, dementia, assisted suicide and end of life care with insight and power.

Yet this simply isn't a detective thriller - it's a beautiful study of end of life issues arbitrarily crammed into a crime novel format just to form part of an existing series.

Fiction has to take liberties with fact and literary detectives shouldn't be too hamstrung by procedure. Yet Ms Hill's Detective Chief Superintendent (note the implausibly high rank for a jobbing detective) Serailler ultimately makes decisions that are so far removed from policing, or even securing justice for the victims he purports to serve, that they beggar belief. I can't go further without giving the game away, but Serailler's crucial decisions are incredible, and not in a good way.

While The Independent applauded Ms Hill for "sidestepping conventions", by forgetting that Serailler is actually supposed to be a police officer, she has simply sidestepped credible plotting.

The whole point of a police officer in fiction (and in real life) is that he or she is not a free agent and has to serve something bigger than themselves, whatever the personal cost.

The bottom line - write a police procedural, or don't. Putting the Chuckle Brothers in a slasher movie would `sidestep convention', but it wouldn't please either target audience.

I'll take free agents with warped agendas of their own - like the admirable David Peace in his Red Riding trilogy. At least they're true to themselves and not just window dressing.

For an authentic and believable slice of police detective fiction, which also happens to feature end of life care and murderous angst in the suburbs, try Bright Spark by Gavin Smith. I recently gave this new author a whirl and was glad I did.

I should start by saying that I normally thoroughly enjoy Susan Hill's work, in particular 'The Woman in Black', which I think is one of the best modern ghost stories I have read. I have found this series to be well written, but there seems to be a very strong and distinctive moral imperative that has always been present, but is now completely overwhelming the plot. In this, the latest book, one of the main characters, Simon Serrailler, a senior police officer, is investigating two older murders, and is also undergoing the latest painful instalment of his complicated love life, but the main point of this book seems to be to get across an anti-euthanasia message, so omnipresent as to make the 'cold case' plot almost redundant. This sentiment has been expressed earlier in the series, particularly when Cat, a GP and Simon's sister, is approached for help by her own husband who is dying, frightened and in pain, from a brain tumour, and whom she turns down comprehensively, forbidding him to even speak of it again, but here it was a sub-plot and not the main thrust of the plot. In this book, the anti-euthanasia theme is expressed in several different ways, from the woman who is suffering with motor neurone disease, who attends a very sinister clinic abroad, to the mysterious new doctor and his clinic locally, to Cat and Simon's severely handicapped sister who may not have had had a natural death and to even concern Simon's latest love interest married to a much older and sick husband. There is no attempt to acknowledge any alternative points of view, and any difficulties encountered through the anti-euthanasia message simply disappear; the woman who is dying from motor neurone disease eventually just drops out of the plot. This review has been about euthanasia because that is was the book is about, and whilst of course any author has the right to hold whatever view they choose, I fear that by holding the anti-euthanasia argument so strongly Ms Hill is in danger of losing her objectivity and her plot.

This wasn't as good as I have come to expect from Susan Hill. The ending was rushed leaving the reader expecting another chapter. Maybe I just found murder, dementia, euthanasia and threatened hospice closure one too many depressing subjects for a novel! Hopefully this author might write something more uplifting in the near future. This series seems to touch every tragic circumstance that could happen to a family.

i'd liked the other Serrailler novels so much - and i was thoroughly getting into this one and enjoying it, when... it suddenly came to an end! there were so many loose ends left hanging i don't know where to begin - in fact i won't even try, because i don't want to spoil this book for anyone.
most of it was great, but i felt it could have run to at least four more chapters. what a great shame, because this book was really shaping up to be first rate: attempting the difficult issue of assisted suicide, for instance, with what felt like a (fairly) open mind. i think if Susan Hill were not such a respected novelist - indeed, if this was a first book by an unknown writer - her editor would have pressured her to resolve all the threads thoroughly at the end, and not dump everything in an inconclusive heap.

I found this book was mostly about caring for those with long term illness and euthanasia, and the ending was terrible, with Serrailler not even intending to report the murderer for the crime. I think he is one of the most badly drawn detectives ever, which is disappointing because Susan Hill is a great writer but to be honest Cat and Simon are just one dimensional. And what is the point of them having a third triplet, Ivo, who makes no appearances whatsoever. The father, Richard, could be an interesting character but is taken nowhere, and killing off Chris meant absolutely nothing. Lazy writing for money in my opinion and disappointing.

I've read the previous books, this one focused more on the serious illnesses and assisted suicides rather than the detective side of things.

The Serraillier books always have two story-lines - that of the murder mystery and that of the Serraillier family and in particular Simon Serraillier the detective in charge of the murder. He is a somewhat complicated character and his relationships with women are usually a disaster. In this book he meets and falls for Rachel Wyatt, a married woman with an elderly sick husband who she has said she will not leave. Is this a real passion on his behalf or another case of Simon wanting someone he cannot have. Only time will tell. There is also Simon's relationship with his widowed twin sister and his failure to give her the support he promises and she needs with her three young children. I am beginning to see him as a rather shallow, selfish character but again time will tell. The actual murder story I did not feel was as good as some of the earlier ones but I am still looking forward to reading the next Serraillier novel which I now have.

I quite enjoyed it. The Simon Serailler stories are not your usual detective tales, but I quite like the family issues that are in the stories. The euthanasia issue was very interesting.

I would have given 5 stars for the quality of Susan Hill's writing but the number of times scenes were filled with people drinking or making coffee looked like she didn't know what else to say. The characters must have had caffeine poisoning and it really irritated me.

I've long accepted that this series is about a detective and his family rather than detection. However, this book was obviously an attempt to explore other issues and the detective aspect was a bit perfunctory. It didn't seem quite finished, again as if the author was either bored or ran out of things to say.

In fairness, I probably read this book at the wrong time while recovering from an operation. While the subjects are worthy of discussion, it left me feeling depressed. Susan Hill is not the only author to bolt social issues on to detective fiction (cf. Elizabeth George) but the combination doesn't work for me.

As others have said, the romance storyline didn't work at all.