Tag: Simon Serrailler

Top Ten Tuesday: Genre Freebie

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This time of year is also the time when I indulge in these genres - just before we start on the tradmill of the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Booker longlists and the more self-consciously literary offerings. Do I see or recognise the distinction between genre and literary fiction...? I'm not sure that I do at all to be honest. Isn't it all just a marketing tool? All I recognise really is the ability of books to transport and entertain and challenge me in some way. Anyway, let's pick... crime as a genre for the purpose of this list after a somewhat lengthy preamble. And I offer to you my ten favourite crime books... prepare for murder, deception and violence.

Top Ten Tuesday Freebie: Fictional Readers

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This week is a freebie week and I am in the midst of listening to Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, her first novel and written around 1798, albeit not published until after her death. It is part of my half-formed intention - a vague idea and inclination perhaps - to try to re-read Austen, returning to an author that I did not gel with as a teenager at university. Certainly, it is much funnier and more wry than I remembered Austen to be. Which bodes well. Anyway, the point of this preamble is that I love the way Catherine Morland becomes obsessed with The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe - to the extent that she would prefer to curl up at home with the novel than venture out into Bath's social scene, has limited conversation save for her love of the novel, and is desperate for her life to emulate the thrills and passions of the novel. So I thought I'd use this as a springboard to explore bookworms in fiction.

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Characters

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Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Previous Top Ten Tuesday Topics March 15: Books On My Spring 2022… Continue reading Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Characters

Book Review: A Change of Circumstance, Susan Hill

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Simon Serrailler finds himself in devastating new territory as a sophisticated drugs network sets its sights on Lafferton and the surrounding villagesDCS Simon Serrailler has long regarded drugs ops in the Lafferton area as a waste of time. Small-time dealers are picked up outside the local secondary school, they're given a fine or a suspended… Continue reading Book Review: A Change of Circumstance, Susan Hill

Top Ten Tuesday: Freebie: Favourite Fictional Detectives

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Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Previous Top Ten Tuesday Topics August 3: Titles or Covers That Made… Continue reading Top Ten Tuesday: Freebie: Favourite Fictional Detectives

Top Five Saturday: Detective Fiction

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The Top 5 series is back! Top Five Saturday is a meme hosted by Devouring Books in which the bookish community discover and share books that all have a common theme. Previously, the meme has focused on a range of different characters (witches and werewolves), genres (thrillers, detectives and re-tellings) and thoughts about the industry and life… Continue reading Top Five Saturday: Detective Fiction

The Benefit of Hindsight, Susan Hill

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As a series continues, they become increasingly difficult to review, don't you find? All the witty and intelligent comments you can think of you have used before! So, looking at The Benefit of Hindsight, have we got all the hallmarks of a Simon Serrailler novel? Has Lafferton been struck by a series of horrific crimes?… Continue reading The Benefit of Hindsight, Susan Hill

Top Ten Tuesday: Character Traits I Love

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Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. So this week we are looking at character traits we love. Things… Continue reading Top Ten Tuesday: Character Traits I Love

The Comforts of Home, Susan Hill

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How does Simon Serrailler recover from a vicious assault at the hands of paedophiles, which left him on the verge of death? How does Serrailler manage his post-traumatic stress disorder? Entry number nine in Susan Hill's DCS Simon Serrailler series picks up where the previous novel, The Soul of Discretion, finishes: Serrailler is in hospital… Continue reading The Comforts of Home, Susan Hill

The Soul of Discretion, Susan Hill

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Trigger Warning: child sexual abuse and rape. Ah, Susan Hill, you seemed to have taken a different direction with this book from the rest of the Serrailler series. Had the gentility of Lafferton started to wane for you? Was there only so much you could do with the cloistered - and I choose that metaphor… Continue reading The Soul of Discretion, Susan Hill

Weekly Round Up: 2nd July 2018

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Exciting news this week! New blog features have arrived! Well, been made. By me. I'm not sure they quite work right, but as I'm seeking access to ARCs and am signed up to NetGalley and other blogging lists, I learn that a Review Policy is required. It sounds terribly formal and... binding. But if these… Continue reading Weekly Round Up: 2nd July 2018

The Betrayal of Trust and A Question of Identity, Susan Hill

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Ahhhh Lafferton. Possibly even more dangerous than Midsomer or a dinner party with Jessica Fletcher and Jane Marple! The serial killer centre of England. I've lost track of the numbers of serial killers in the Simon Serrailler series: they've targetted women for medical reasons, abducted young children; they've targetted weddings and, now, the elderly in… Continue reading The Betrayal of Trust and A Question of Identity, Susan Hill

Weekly Round Up: 26th June 2018

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As we continue to slog through exam marking, the time available for reading has alas dropped and the wakefulness and attention span when the time arrives is also limited! I am continuing to listen to Jessie Burton's The Muse on the journeys into and out of work and enjoying the characters of Odelle and Olive. It isn't… Continue reading Weekly Round Up: 26th June 2018

The Shadows In The Street, Susan Hill

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Okay. Please put Lafferton and Bevham in the list of places I don't want to visit because of their high body count. Midsomer, Stockholm, Lafferton.  Poor Lafferton. I think this, the fifth book in Susan Hill's Simon Serrailer series, has the third serial killer in the Cathedral city since the first book. I don't think… Continue reading The Shadows In The Street, Susan Hill

The Risk Of Darkness, Susan Hill

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This will be a fairly brief review for two reasons: firstly, I thought I'd already reviewed it and only realised when I tried to link my review of The Vows of Silence to it that I'd not; and secondly, it is very much a continuation of the second novel, The Pure In Heart. Serrailler is… Continue reading The Risk Of Darkness, Susan Hill

The Vows Of Silence, Susan Hill

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Susan Hill is, without doubt, a fantastic writer. The Woman In Black is an exquisitely crafted horror; Strange Meeting is exceptional. so I am persevering with these detective novels hoping for ... well something. But I've not found it yet. I really don't know what it is that's missing but something is. The plots are decent enough: this… Continue reading The Vows Of Silence, Susan Hill

The Pure In Heart, Susan Hill

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I'm genuinely unsure of what to make of this book. Don't get me wrong. It's not a bad book; listening to it as an audiobook was a pretty pleasant way to spend my journeys to work. But it didn't seem to be what it was packaged as and marketed as: a crime mystery. It felt… Continue reading The Pure In Heart, Susan Hill

Various Haunts Of Men, Susan Hill

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I've enjoyed various Susan Hill novels: The Woman in Black and The Little Stranger in particular and so it was that I was looking forward to picking up on the Simon Serrailler crime series which I hadn't come across before. In honesty, I picked up A Question of Identity first which is the seventh in… Continue reading Various Haunts Of Men, Susan Hill