Andrew Taylor

An unorthodox detective novel about Waitrose-country paedos

A review of The Soul of Discretion, by Susan Hill. There is little pure detection in the latest in Hill’s Serraillier series; the focus lies elsewhere

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  • The Soul of Discretion

    Susan Hill

    Chatto, pp. 320

W.H. Auden was addicted to detective fiction. In his 1948 essay ‘The Guilty Vicarage’, he analysed the craving, which he claimed was similar to an addiction to tobacco or alcohol. He suggested among other things that the genre allows the addict to indulge in a fantasy in which our guilt is purged, and we are restored to a state of innocence, to the Garden of Eden.

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