Hilly Ground

Ooooh, joy unbounded.

Have finally got my greasy mitts on a copy of the new Susan Hill and I’m delighted with life.

Well, I got my mitts on it the day it came out but I had three essays due that week. So it’s taken me a few days to get around to it; I didn’t want to rush it, see.

Susan Hill, as you may have guessed, is one of my all-time favourite writers. The last couple of weeks have been excellent for anybody who is similarly inclined, with the release of a paperback edition of The Shadows in The Street, a collectors edition copy of The Woman in Black, and the aforementioned new novel, the sixth in her Simon Serailler series.  These are seriously popular novels, which heartens me because they’re not your average whodunit. There’s more of a literary fiction vibe about the series, but not in a scary way; think Kate Atkinson and her Jackson Brodie novels and you have the right idea.

Anyway, The Betrayal of Trust opens with massive flooding in the south of England, which causes a landslip that exposes some skeletal human remains. These remains are likely those of the daughter of a lord and lady who disappeared some fifteen years prior. Our hero is no faced with a cold case, in a police department plagued by cutbacks and dwindling resources. There’s also a secondary storyline about assisted suicide that I imagine will raise some debate; it’s not an area that people seem to be very comfortable with, but Hill tackles it with her usual skill and a sense of firmness that I quite liked. There’s also an economy of prose to the book; what other writers say in fifteen words, Hill will say in five. Five decent, fleshy words with not a wasted apostrophe. I approve heartily of this skill in a novelist. There aren’t many writers out there who can write so sparsely but so well.

If you haven’t read any of this series yet, I’d go out and get the first one, The Various Haunts of Men post haste. They are proper winter books for long nights in with the central heating on full blast and a nice glass of red wine. The new book is a solid eight out of ten-not the best in the series but still a damn good read.