The body count is impressive in Susan Hill’s new crime novel; so, too, is the roster of crimes and causes of death. Detective Chief Inspector Simon Serrailler wrestles with increasing lassitude, missing ‘excitement, the adrenalin rush’: assimilating child abduction, suicide, the revenge killings of a disturbed youth, hostage-holding in the cathedral close and the cruel devastation of variant CJD, the reader is unlikely to share Serrailler’s ennui.
The Risk of Darkness is Susan Hill’s third Simon Serrailler novel. It takes up where its predecessor left off, the DCI still frustrated in his attempts to track down a child-kidnapper whose actions wear an ever more sinister aspect. It encompasses elements of surprise and melodrama, large- and small-scale emotions; all are handled with the same unsqueamishness and lack of sentimentality.
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