A Question of Identity: A Simon Serrailler Mystery (Chief Superintendent Simon Serrailler Mystery) - Softcover

Susan Hill’s novels and short stories have won the Whitbread Book, Somerset Maugham, and John Llewellyn Rhys Awards, the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year, and have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The play adapted from her famous ghost novel, The Woman in Black, has been running in the West End since 1989. She lives in the UK.

The title of this, the seventh in the Simon Serrailler mysteries, gives a hint at the complexities of identity. In the novel, identity is something police and prosecutors must establish to link person and scene of the crime. It also becomes something much more fluid and pernicious as it relates to character and deception. Past informs the present here—in 2002, a serial killer in Yorkshire has, incredibly to all the trial watchers, gotten away with his murders. Quick cut to 2012 and Hill’s fictional town of Lafferton. An elderly woman is murdered in her home. Detective Chief Inspector Serrailler suspects a serial killer from the start. His profiling skills, based on the evidence at the scene, are impressive. Sure enough, more murder follows, with Serrailler and his squad desperately trying to catch the cunning killer. The novel is spiked with the killer’s musings, which heighten tension and illuminate a very dark space. Very spooky, tick-tock suspense. --Connie Fletcher