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Friday 5 December 2008

The Vows of Silence

Love lies bleeding

Andrew Taylor reviews the fourth novel in Susan Hill’s crime series

Susan Hill’s crime novels are getting better and better. Though her series format is of course familiar, she brings to it qualities that make it her own. The main plot is straightforward enough — who is the killer and will he be caught? — but the narrative is so streamlined and effective that it races beautifully along until it smacks against the buffers of an unexpected but entirely convincing ending. The technicalities of police investigation seem plausible, as does the interaction between the officers. The novel gains depth, not distraction, from the wealth of other stories that cluster around the private lives of its characters. Much of it unfolds in dialogue or short, crisp sentences. (Incidentally, Hill is particularly good at using her prose to modulate the pace of the narrative.)

On one level, this is a book about sudden and premature death and its effect not only on those who die but also on those who remain. Here, whether death comes with a bullet or a tumour, it is a blunt instrument that destroys peace and forces a brutal reassessment of life’s priorities. Perhaps this is the central question that Hill poses in this gripping and thought-provoking novel: how on earth do we cope?

Andrew Taylor’s latest novel is Bleeding Heart Square (Michael Joseph).

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