When I came across Susan Hill as a judge for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, I remembered that she is best known for her ghost stories and her much hyped Mrs De Winter, a sequel to Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. More recently she has turned to writing crime stories featuring DCI Simon Serrailler. The Risk of Darkness (2006) is the third in a series of five.Hill is clear that the Serrailler books are crime novels – but not detective stories. She sees the crime novel as ‘a serious literary genre’, which she believes offers the opportunity for comment on contemporary life. She wants to know ‘not ‘who dunnit’ but much more importantly WHY’. So her stories are not police procedurals like the ones I wrote about in a recent post; there is relatively little detection, and solving the crime is not the narrative driver of the novel.There are three major crimes in the story. Only one of them directly involves Serrailler as a policeman: the kidnapping and presumed murder of a young boy. But it is very much the ‘why’ rather than the ‘who’ that concerns Hill, as the reader knows early in the book who dunnit. Two other deaths affect the lives of Serrailler’s family and friends in the cathedral town where he is stationed, though again it is a question of explanation rather than resolution. Further perspectives are given by parents and neighbours of those involved. Unlike in the detective genre, at least some of the action is left open-ended, which is arguably a realistic way of commenting on life.I identified two major themes in the story that serve to tie together the otherwise rather disparate plot. These are the relationship between crime, mental derangement and evil, and love, its presence and absence, between men and women, and within families. Is the kidnapper mad or bad? Can such a person, apparently wholly self-centred, love another person? Can someone love them? Is it experiences in childhood that shape the urge to violence? How does thwarted love become a motive for violence? And can a deranged mind be said to be driven by ‘motives’ anyway? Some of these questions are implicit, and others are raised by characters in the story, though they are not the sort of questions that can really be answered. Serrailler nevertheless thinks that the crimes ‘seemed linked in some dreadful intangible way, part of a pattern, part of a connection with him and his work and his life’.Detective stories, whether police procedural or private investigator, stand or fall by how convincingly the crime is set up and then solved. They may comment on contemporary life, but overall they are judged on the strength of the plot. The problem with writing crime novels that depend on psychological insight rather than plot is that they are much harder to pull off. There are great exponents – Crime and Punishment, for example, or at a less elevated level, the work of Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine. Susan Hill writes very competently, but with no exceptional originality or subtly, about these issues. Serrailler is a reasonably complex character (part-time artist, cold in his relationships with women other than his mother and sister, uncertain about where his career is taking him), but I’m not sure what this characterisation adds to the story. I find some of Hill’s social commentary rather condescending in tone, particularly where she is dealing with her less well-educated characters. And while it is fine to deal at a psychological level, one of the major crimes is not convincingly dealt with at any level.Given that I’ve said in an earlier post that I’m not overly impressed with the literary capacities of Stella Rimington, chair of the 2011 Man Booker judging panel, and now not overly impressed with Susan Hill, a member of it, it will be interesting to see what sort of writing they award the prize to.Read this review at What Book to Read
The Risk of Darkness is the 3rd in a series of atypical crime novels featuring the detective Simon Serrailler. I have very much enjoyed the series so far and I will be putting book no. 4 on my reserve list soon. However, I would offer some cautions to a fan of straightforward who-dunnits and police procedurals about Susan Hill's style.Crimes are not neatly solved in this series. The police are not Sherlock Holmsian in their perceptions and abilities. Loose ends are left hanging. Questions are left unanswered. Frustration can build in the reader, as it does in the protagonists, as motivations are sought but not always identified. Killers are pursued but not always caught by the end of the last page.I believe it is very important to begin this series at book number one (The Various Haunts of Man) and move on in chronological sequence. Characters are introduced at various times and their actions build into the next story. The murderer, identified early in this book, for instance, was still running amok at the end of the last one...leaving a disturbing lack of closure to the families of the victims.In Serrailler, Hill has developed a lead player who is a realistic and flawed persona. As in her plots, all is not neat and clean with her leading man. Although Serrailler can be an attractive character in some ways, he is also arrogant and self absorbed and a bit of a playa with the women he encounters.I enjoy ambiguity and uncertainty and the sloppiness of reality in fiction if it is done well enough. I found this particular installment to be less compelling than the first two books in the series. But I did not consider it to be a 'bad' book. I believe it pushed the boundaries of my acceptance for grey areas. Sometimes there is just no neat explanation available for why a person becomes a killer. The police blotters in cities across the world do not read like Perry Mason. The Risk of Darkness will not scare you (unless you pause to consider how terrifying the unidentified urge to take lives can be.) It will not answer your driving question when you read the last chapter. This can be a real problem in a mystery series and there will be readers who will say 'What was the point of that?" And I believe the point is that reality is more frightening than the darkest horror story. Police do not have super powers of detection and clairvoyance. A good police will try as hard as possible, stay focused, put away some bad guys and try not to let the job kill them. The story here revolves around an abductor and killer of children who defies any profiling category. Serrailler continues in his conflicted relationship with his family (a sister he is close to, her family, and his aging parents...all of whom we have met in the first two books.)
What do You think about The Risk Of Darkness (2006)?
Susan Hill is one of my favourite authors from way back but I'd not read her 'crime novels'. So when a friend recommended them I went straight to the library to find them and came across 'The Risk of Darkness.' I love the way Susan Hill writes, so spare, careful, lucid and clean. Her characters are great and the story gripping. BUT for me it wasn't a 'crime novel'. It was a novel about people, how they were in the world, how they related to each other and how they coped with the various things that happened to them. There is a crime at the heart of the book but we don't get the usual gradual move via clues, both real and red-herrings, to a resolution where the hero or heroine solves the crime. So that's why it has 4 and not 5 stars. I would still recommend this book to anyone as long as they are not looking for a 'whodunit'.
—Jane Seaford
This author and this series was recommended to me with the caveat that I should begin with the first in the series of the Simon Serrailler mysteries, The Various Haunts of Men. I think that would have been a good idea in this case. I find Susan Hill to be a good writer, in that I enjoyed this book for the most part, it kept my interest up and she has good language skills. Even so, there is something a little off with her style. The book cover compares her to P. D. James and Elizabeth George, but I think that is a bit of a stretch, for sure. I look forward to reading The Various Haunts of Men because it might explain some of the problems I had with this particular book. Most mystery books focus on one big mystery/crime with multiple other mysteries that eventually are tied to the main one. This book focuses on several crimes, all of them major horrific, and by the end of the book you find that they are not connected in the least. The one crime that seemed central to the book is solved but with several major questions lingering, I am wondering if this is the author's style and that these questions will be addressed in the next book of the series. I say that because, two of the crime stories in this book seem, to me anyway, like they must have been written about in a previous book of the series.
—Linda
This is not one of my best reviews as I'm full of cold. I am reading Susan Hill's Simon Serailler novels and in sequence. She is a very good writer - her command of the English language is commendable. Aspects of the novel are very upsetting so the nuances of the settings stay with me as the situations described are so life-like.In this book M's Hill does not tell us about one crime but life as it happens in North Yorkshire and how the police handle each crime. Simon and his family are heavily featured in the book but not to the detriment of the story.I cannot wait to read book 4 in this thrilling rollercoaster of a series.
—Debbie Spooner
