In a recent profile, the bestselling crime novelist Ian Rankin declared, ‘Britain has got a lot better in recognising that crime fiction can be literature.’ Perhaps this explains why Susan Hill has turned away from ‘straight’ novels (such as I’m the King of the Castle and In the Springtime of the Year) to embark on a series of detective novels. The intriguing title of her first, The Various Haunts of Men, comes from a poem by George Crabbe.

Her second, The Pure in Heart, begins lyrically in Venice where our hero, DCI Simon Serrailler — thirtysomething, troubled about women and a talented amateur artist — is spending a few days sketching, wandering, and forgetting about the woman he lost in the first book, murdered on the job. Inevitably, he is soon called away to the fictional cathedral city of Lafferton, which plays host to Serrailler’s anti-criminal behaviour.

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