The Various Haunts of Men (Simon Serrailler Crime Novels)

by Susan Hill

Hardcover, 2007

Status

Available

Call number

823.914

Publication

Overlook Hardcover (2007), Edition: Book Club Edition, Hardcover, 438 pages

Description

As the story begins, a lonely woman vanishes while out on her morning run. Then a 22-year-old girl never returns from a walk. An old man disappears too. When fresh-faced policewoman Freya Graffham is assigned to the case, she runs the risk of getting too invested--too involved--in the action. Alongside the enigmatic detective Chief Inspector Simon Serrallier, she must unravel the mystery before events turn too gruesome. Written with intelligence, compassion, and a knowing eye--in the tradition of the fabulous mysteries of Ruth Rendell and P.D. James--The Various Haunts of Men is an enthralling journey into the heart of a wonderfully developed town, and into the very mind of a killer.

Media reviews

Independent

if you write this sort of novel, your readers will expect a process of discovery leading to a form of resolution, a structure which gives the intellectual pleasure characteristic of this branch of the genre. They won't find it here. The identity of the murderer is allowed to drift into the story

three-quarters of the way through. Neither the reader nor police have much to do with it. The killer's motivation is so perfunctorily sketched that it fails to convince. The ending is arbitrary, unsatisfying and suspiciously convenient. A good crime novel follows its own logic. For all its undoubted virtues, this one sometimes loses the scent.

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The Observer

Hill is good at establishing the arcane web of connections in this investigation that result in wrong turnings and false leads. ... Fans of Morse and Midsomer will recognise this mix of rural calm and brutal carnage, choral music and pathology reports, and as the trilogy progresses may even learn

to find in the steely gaze of Simon Serrailler some of the attraction that his sergeant finds so irresistible.

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The Guardian

frustrating and disappointing that Hill should have chosen such a traditional type of crime novel (serial killer, police procedural) to extend her range. This is the crime of small, fictional worlds, rattling tea-cups, genteel suspicions, cherished hatreds, of mists on the lamp-lit heath, grand

moral gestures and lightly treading footsteps - always more Midsomer than Moss Side; more Watson or Marsh, say, than Peace or McDermid.

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User reviews

LibraryThing member drneutron

Folks have begun disappearing in Lafferton, a small town well away from the bustle of London where DS Freya Graffham has come to rebuild her life. At first, she's only got hints and clues that something bad is happening to the missing people, but it soon becomes clear to her that things are

connected. Unfortunately, the powers that be aren't so easily convinced until a fourth person disappears...

The Various Haunts of Men is a decent serial-killer police procedural - plenty of mystery, a little misdirection, some action thrown in for good measure. But where Hill shines is in her characters. We get peeks into the lives of the victims, the investigators are fascinating, the insights into the killer are well done. By the end of the book, the reader is completely engaged with the residents of Lafferton and their lives.

Recommended for those looking for intelligent, well-written mysteries. Fortunately, this is just the first of a series of books, and I'm looking forward to diving in to the next very soon.

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LibraryThing member LizzieD

The Various Haunts of Men is the first in a series of crime procedurals, about to number four, that feature DCI Simon Serrailler. Having said that, I hasten to add that Simon is conspicuous by his relative absence in this mystery. Instead, it is DS Freya Graffham who figures large in the pursuit of

a serial killer in the small town of Lafferton. Another reviewer has mentioned Freya's childishness. I thought the characterization was dead right; Freya has just escaped from an abusive relationship with her professional confidence intact but her personal center thoroughly shaken. She is rebuilding herself and finds herself not to be a perfect architect.
Other reviewers have given a sense of the action, so I won't repeat that. I will reiterate their praise of Susan Hill's writing. Within five pages an anxious reader relaxes in the hands of a more than competent author. Ms. Hill takes pains to develop characters whom she will use again in the next books of the series. Unfortunately for a reader like me, she uses the same degree of care in creating characters that I cared about and will never meet again. Then too, I'm always a bit leery of novels dealing with serial killers, and I found this one as convincing as any. What I was not prepared for was the major plot wrench at the end. I vowed that I would never read another Susan Hill mystery as long as I lived. I broke the vow, of course, drawn back to Lafferton by curiosity about characters and by the enjoyment of Hill's fine writing.

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LibraryThing member mckait

#47 [The Various Haunts of Men ]by Susan Hill

Fantastic read! As do so many British authors Hill handles even the most horrific details with kid gloves, softens them. I enjoy reading British novels for this reason. They seem to understand that fireworks and special effects aren't needed to mak a

story. At the end if the book, she slams you with reality. This is not something I have seen before and I have to say it makes for a good read,

I will be looking to read the next in the series..

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LibraryThing member tymfos

Oh, mercy, what a book this is! I've long heard great comments from fellow LT-ers about this series, but nothing prepared me for how impressive this book was for me. It's a mystery, a police procedural, but so much more. Hill introduces us to a whole village filled with vivid, complex, memorable

characters. And she weaves a complex tale of mystery that starts off rather slowly (though you know there's trouble almost from chapter 1) but picks up momentum and carries the reader away.

A concerned neighbor reports a woman missing. Someone else goes missing, too. These things happen, but Detective Sergeant Freya Graffham suspects there may be a connection, and seeks permission from Chief Inspector Simon Serrallier to work the case. Freya is new to the village of Lafferton, and gets to know many of the local people and places along with the reader. Early on, one wonders about the relevance of some of the story lines, but they all weave together quite expertly as the book goes along.

If you're looking for constant mile-a-minute suspense and cheap thrills, this book probably won't be your cup of tea. But if you like a more subtle and literary kind of mystery -- a complex, well-crafted tale filled with three-dimensional characters and a tremendous sense of place -- I highly recommend this book to you.

This is a marvelously crafted book which I thoroughly enjoyed.

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LibraryThing member Meredy

From the first pages, The Various Haunts of Men invokes the silent menace of fog and shadow even as it depicts the contrasting warmth and welcome to be found in a small (fictitious) cathedral town in southern England. This simple elemental duality of light and dark is reflected in the lives of the

principal characters, from the murderer and his victims to the detectives on his trail. Effects of light and dark enhance the mood and deepen the mystery as they recur like a cinematographer's motif throughout the story.

Like The Woman in Black, this novel showcases Susan Hill's gift for creating atmosphere. She even elicits a shudder with a mere few dozen words of deft description in the chapter where the dog disappears on the hill. Nothing appears to happen. Nothing is seen, little is heard. Yet something evil and hidden is felt.

Mood and mystery set the stage, but the characters are in the foreground. Using an omniscient point of view, the author shows us depths and dimensions of numerous characters who feel startlingly real, as if sketched from life like the drawings of Simon Serrailler.

However, setting and character don't sustain a mystery. Plot is paramount in this genre. And plot is the weak point of this novel. Far too much depends on accidents of circumstance that conveniently point the way. Despite all the donkey work that figures so heavily in police procedurals, the solution seems contrived. The actual detecting and solving seem thin to me.

I must add that I did ID the perpetrator as soon as he'd made his first appearance as a character. I don't think that was the author's intent, and I'm not sure what it was that gave him away, but I was right. From there it was easy to watch his exposure unfold. So the solution was not a surprise at all, although there was indeed suspense.

What's more, it seems odd to call the novel a Simon Serrailler mystery when Serrailler is absent or in the background for most of the story and contributes nothing to the solving of the case.

I also felt that at times the author's apparent mission to call out fraudulent practitioners of allegedly healing arts, doing potential harm even when they hurt no one overtly, simply by diverting patients from standard treatments that could actually help them, threatened to turn the story into a soapbox.

So this is definitely a mixed review: like the story itself, an uneven patchwork of light and shadow. I like Susan Hill's writing, as seen in two novels so far, and I will probably read the book that comes after this. But the weakness of plot--and one big departure from the conventions of the genre that I can't say sat well with me--cause me to feel less confidence than I want to feel when I commit hours of my life to the work of a writer of mysteries, where the good guys are supposed to win and the bad guys should be dealt such justice as the constraints of circumstance allow.

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LibraryThing member MuseofIre

Excellent, absorbing police procedural/thriller about several missing people, possibly shady New Age practitioners, and the mind of a serial killer. Hill feeds the reader plenty of clues about the identity of the villain and doesn't make the mistake of many authors of trying to sustain the mystery

past the point of plausibility; at the appropriate point, the story changes focus from "whodunnit?" to "how will they catch him?" The various characters are all vividly sketched (although in the end there are many unanswered questions about the killer) and add to the sense of an interlocking community in the charming town of Lafferton. The final murder is a shock and genuinely sad because you've come to care for the character so much.

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LibraryThing member Scratch

This vivid and absorbing serial killer novel rises well above the crime genre thanks to the author's intense empathy for her characters. A thread of irrevocable loss pervades the novel. Virtually every major character has lost someone or something, or will do as the plot progresses. The detective

protagonist has escaped a miserable marriage; an elderly woman's husband of fifty years has died of cancer; a doctor's best friend is beginning to lose her health to cancer; and the killer, it is implied, has lost a chance at a yearned-for career. The book's pacing increases gradually and steadily like an unhealthy pulse. Toward the climax, Hill makes a bold decision that many (or most) authors couldn't pull off without being accused of ham-fisted deus ex machina. Highly recommended.

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LibraryThing member bookswoman

This is an excellent book. Well written, powerful and wonderful characters, a compelling mystery and a poetry to the words.

There are a *lot* of characters in this book and several story lines that are running in various directions. This isn't book to pick up and expect to follow in bits 'n pieces,

you'll need to sit down and devote time to getting people and stories straight and then try and get them to merge in the right places because the author doesn't merge them until much later in the book.

Having said all that, I can say that I didn't like the ending, not because Hill cheated in any way, she played fair all the way through the book, but the results for at least two characters felt "wrong". No spoilers here but the ending was a shock.

According to what I've read about this series Inspector Simon Serrailler is the main character but in this book he almost appears to be a sideline character. The main character, at least to me, is new Sgt. Freya Graffham. She is new to the force in which Simon is her boss. I also love Nathan the officer described as having a face like a monkey. He turns into one of my favorite characters!

I'll read more in this series, although I may wait a while, Hill writes an intense story and I think I need something "lighter" before I tackle the next book.

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LibraryThing member bhowell

This is the first book in the detective Simon Serrailler series and a great read. It takes place in a fictional English cathedral town where an unusual number of people are disappearing. A psychopath is on the loose and carrying out his plan which he has prepared for all his life.
I had read "The

Risk of Darkness first which is the 3rd in the series and now I am ordering "The Pure in Heart" which is the second.
Susan Hill is such an accomplished writer and this series is fabulous.

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LibraryThing member eleanor_eader

Quiet Lafferton, with its drug problems and white good thefts is a change from the Met for Sergeant Freya Graffham, but she nevertheless finds herself connecting the dots on two seemingly unrelated missing persons cases to uncover a possible serial killer, while fighting off an unwanted, powerful

attraction to her new boss, DCI Simon Serrailler.

I enjoy the author for her knack for evocation of atmosphere, and I was intrigued to know if her skill set extended to functional plotting of crime investigations, so I picked it up without hesitation. It was an enjoyable read; somewhat derivative, perhaps – there was less of Hill’s unique voice than I’d hoped, in that it often felt like a P.D. James novel with less literary heft, but more immediate character portrayal. And Sergeant Graffham’s choir singing seemed to echo the old Morse tales of Colin Dexter – not the academia, precisely, but the higher-thought atmosphere. Honestly, though, I wish more writers of crime fiction would reach for those heights, so although I was sorry that Hill didn’t stand out more in the genre, I was nevertheless impressed. It is a very readable novel and, despite the title (which I like very much), quite feminine in focus (we see less of Serrailler than of Freya, his sergeant, despite this being the introductory book of, I believe, a trilogy if not a series in which Serrailler is the principal detective).

Does Susan Hill manage to pull off the crime plotting? Well, this is a hard one to peg, because the brief success that the investigation enjoyed seemed to arrive by virtue of the suspect being overly arrogant, and then ended on a note of failure… the atmosphere of sadness seemed rather more the point than the wrapping up of the investigation. I can hardly complain, since atmosphere is why I picked the author’s work up in the first place. I shall be interested, however, to see if Hill makes the plot work a bit harder in the next book, or if she hides behind conventional scenarios.

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LibraryThing member bsquaredinoz

Freya Graffham has left her job with The Met in London for a quieter life as a Detective Sergeant in the Cathedral town of Lafferton in southern England. As she’s settling into her new job and new life she learns of a woman, Angela Randall, who has been reported missing by her employer. With

little to go on but a gut feeling Freya is unable to continue working on the case until a second woman is reported missing. We readers know that something untoward is happening to the women because of a series of communications from the culprit to an un-named person but Freya isn’t privy to these missives and must pursue the investigation with frustratingly little to go on.

I should not have liked this book. It’s a brick of a thing, it really isn’t terribly suspenseful (although the last 100 or so pages are quite gripping) and meeting the purported main character was an entirely unsatisfactory experience. All of these factors should have put the book on my ‘don’t bother’ list. However, its redemption lies in the beauty of its depiction of the fictional town of Lafferton and its inhabitants. Hill paints a detailed and engaging picture of the town with doctors who still make house calls, an uplifting choir and an uneasiness for the new-age ‘healers’ of all sorts who are moving into the area. Layered atop this are a wonderful selection of people including those who will become the victims of the killer. By the time each of them becomes a victim I felt I knew them quite intimately and cared rather deeply about their demise in a way that I often don’t in a standard police procedural in which I’ve only learned about the victim after their death.

Aside from these victims there are a swag of other characters who are wonderfully drawn. The high esteem that everyone had for DCI Simon Serrailler didn’t seem terribly warranted based on what we saw of him in this book. However I adored members of his family, primarily his mother and his triplet sister Cat, and look forward to spending more time with them in the future. Freya Graffham, whose annoyance at falling in love with her DCI is wonderfully portrayed, is also great character as is the DS that she co-opts for her missing person investigation. Even the minor players, like Sandy who is the flatmate of one of the missing women, are depicted in so much detail that I felt as if I would recognise them all should I happen to meet them.

Several reviews of this book make mention of the numerous loose ends remaining at the end of The Various Haunts of Men and I agree there are a swag of them. I tend not to mind loose ends as I find them more realistic than having everything wrapped up neatly but I can understand others’ frustration with them. However, I’ve already imagined what’s happened to resolve most of the loose ends and, at least until I read the next book in this series, I’ll just assume I’ve gotten it all right.

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LibraryThing member wandering_star

This is the first of a series of detective novels by Susan Hill. A quiet care-home worker goes missing, and a newly-arrived policewoman sees something worth pursuing in the case. An unhappy, overweight young woman turns to an alternative healer to help her overcome her depression and acne. Just as

things start looking up for her, she too disappears.

There were some interesting things about this book - I liked the family of the chief inspector, his bossy but good-hearted mother and his caring doctor sister. The theme of alternative medicine was unusual and interesting. And I found the mystery perfectly adequate, if rather wordy.

However, I couldn't really get over how stilted the dialogue was - especially the alternative therapists, who all explain how they work in a very formal and precise way: "Now, first of all, we will both continue to sit here like this. I shan't draw the curtains or light any candles or anything of that sort. I don't work with a spirit guide either, as some mediums and clairvoyants do. I wouldn't find that helpful."

Not a waste of time, but I won't be hurrying to acquire the rest of the series.

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LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd

First in a series. A mystery, with a whole cast of wonderful characters; women gone missing without a trace; a colony of "alternative" healers, legitimate and otherwise; a mysterious pathological "pathologist"; a small cathedral town with its own minor set of "stones" on the Hill.... It grabbed me

and kept me reading much like the Tana French Dublin murder squad series, or the Jackson Brodie books. But Hill does French and Atkinson one better, in a gutsy way I can't reveal without spoiling the story. Billed as the first Simon Serrailler mystery, it's really more about one of his squad, Detective Sergeant Freya Graffham, from whose point of view much of the story is told. There are other POV's as well, but she comes across as the primary character here. Serrailler is quite a minor player, apart from the fact that Freya falls hard for him and struggles with what to do about that. I loved it.

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LibraryThing member auntmarge64

A haunting mystery and beautifully written, but the book's marketing leads to expectations which mar the actual experience. While considered to be the first of the Simon Serrailler series, Serrailler himself is a minor character here, and I wonder if the book was originally intended as a stand

alone. Although the drama of this entry does contribute to later character development, don't expect to see or learn much about the series' main character. But do read it for the interesting mystery that it is.

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LibraryThing member JaneSteen

Where I got the book: audiobook on Audible.

I’d checked a couple of the Serailler books out of the library in the past, and have long been meaning to listen to the entire series. I loved Susan Hill’s creepy stories when I was younger.

This, of course, is Book 1, and what’s most interesting

about it in my opinion is that we are introduced to Simon Serailler purely from the outside and that he’s seen in large part through the eyes of someone who’s only recently met him and who, to her great chagrin, has almost immediately fallen in love with him. That’s a pretty interesting device, as if Hill deliberately set out to call attention to the power a good fictional detective of the classic English type has over us. Serailler’s got all the hallmarks: he’s good at his job, he’s a loner, he’s got a sensitive, artistic side to the point where more than one of his colleagues think’s he’s gay. Sort of a cross between Adam Dalgleish and Lord Peter Wimsey, and in the same way this novel blends police procedural with Serailler’s family life, roping in a few friends and colleagues along the way. Of course he also has the aura of authority (a powerful aphrodisiac) and Hill seems to wave that in front of the reader’s face by having the woman who falls for him be one of his subordinates. I think I knew pretty early on how that particular plot line was going to end, although I ended up liking Freya and hoping it wouldn’t. And I think Hill meant me both to like her and to suspect what was going to happen.

One thing that distinguishes this first book is that we hear from the killer early on, building a picture of who he is psychologically long before we know who he is in fact. The plot centers around the theme of alternative medicine, very suitable since most of the Seraillers are doctors, and you get the distinct impression that Hill is on the side of orthodoxy so all in all by the time I was a little more than halfway through the book I knew where the killer was coming from.

The plotting of the book’s a little messy, for all that this is probably the most neatly structured of the Serailler books. Hill’s not a writer to reward you with a feeling of smug satisfaction; she seems to like to keep her readers a little on the uncomfortable side and is predictable in some places while throwing curve balls in others. These are good books for mystery readers who like to get involved with the characters as much as they want to see the unraveling of the mystery. Narrator Steven Pacey does a smooth, relaxed job, and is good at varying the accents without exaggerating them.

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LibraryThing member cbl_tn

While most of the Lafferton CID is focused on a drugs case, recent transfer Detective Sergeant Freya Graffham almost single-handedly pursues the disappearances of women who have gone missing near “The Hill” in recent months. In her limited free time, Freya participates in a community choir,

which unexpectedly brings her into social contact with the mother of her DCI, Simon Serrailler. Seeing Simon outside their professional surroundings sparks Freya's interest in developing more than a professional relationship with her chief. However, Simon has a reputation for keeping women at arm's length. Meanwhile, Simon's physician sister, Cat, is becoming concerned about some of the alternative health practitioners who seem to be preying on her most vulnerable patients. Then one of Cat's patients becomes one of the missing women and part of the police investigation.

Simon Serrailler was mostly absent in the first book in the series that bears his name. I thought that was odd. I didn't see enough of him to form an opinion about his personality. Although much is made of his rapid advancement within the ranks of the CID, I wasn't impressed with his job performance. His total absorption in the high profile drugs case resulted in his neglect of the missing persons cases, with tragic consequences. I wonder if this book was originally conceived as a standalone novel that the author later decided to continue as a series. Fans of the series say that it improves as the series progresses, so I'll give Simon at least one more chance before giving up on it.

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LibraryThing member Eyejaybee

I found this book rather laboured.

The plot was fine but the novel moved at a turgid, almost glacial pace. That needn't be a negative characteristic if the author is offering us perfectly drawn characters and beautiful prose. In this instance, however, neither of those characteristics were on hand

to rescue this book from being simply rather dull.

In fact, I can hardly summon the mental energy to attempt to say much more about it. Some people disappear and Detective Chief Inspector Simon Serailler investigates.

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LibraryThing member jennybeast

I am conflicted.

On the one hand, I found the characters compelling, and I thought the POV changes worked well. I also really enjoyed the setting of the town, and the thoughtful discussion of alternative therapies. As someone who enjoys PD James, I was excited to settle in with a new DI and his

crew, and the crew is very appealing. It was a great read.

On the other hand **big spoiler** I HATE authors who unexpectedly kill off main characters. I am still harboring a grudge against Elizabeth George for exactly that behavior, so the part where the main character of the book (not Simon Serrailler, not at all) is murdered? Kinda killed it for me. I get that the trope of new young inspector comes to town, is female, is great at her job and therefore, without exception will become the target of a serial killer is done to death. I get why actually killing that character off makes an interesting statement on mysteries in general. But I really liked Freya, and Simon basically wasn't in this book, so I found it upsetting. I have no idea what to expect of the continuing series -- I may or may not stick with it. Also, I would very much have liked some of the other plot threads to be cleanly wrapped up -- did anything further happen with the psychic surgeon? What happened with Karin's diagnosis? Realistically vague, but I don't read these kinds of mysteries for realism, I read them for satisfying conclusions, and this one did not offer anything as comforting as that.

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LibraryThing member Jim53

For the "first Simon Serailler mystery," the book didn't show us much of Simon at all. That non-revelation might have been part of the point, but it confused my expectations and had me wondering when he would take more of a part. I found myself wondering how the various threads about different

characters and their ailments would come together; I suppose Hill was "exploring" the ideas of alternative treatments and quacks, as a separate theme from the murder investigation. I would have enjoyed it more had there been a more visible connection. Hill breaks a rather significant rule about such books, and does it in such a way that it refocuses our attention, and presumably drives character development in subsequent volumes. I think the only characters I really liked were Cat and Ugly Nathan (that is part of his name, isn't it?).

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LibraryThing member Mumineurope

good character development and plot. Surprised she died!!

LibraryThing member AJBraithwaite

I mostly enjoyed this novel. I felt there were a lot of loose ends - what happened to the boy with leukaemia, for example, and the psychic surgeon. I also did get fed up of getting to know a character who was then killed off - particularly towards the end of the book.

At one point the character

called Aidan is referred to as 'Adrian'. Editing ain't what it used to be...

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LibraryThing member christinelstanley

Susan Hill is fast becoming a favourite author. Having read a couple of her ghost stories, I wasn't sure what to expect, but this was thoroughly enjoyable. Not a fast paced whodunnit, but it's what I imagine real police work to be; a mixture of instinct and frustration. The end was realistic and

whilst I'm a sucker for a happy ending, I think we are left with a far more authentic end than many crime writers have the courage to provide.
I'm eager to read the next in this series.

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LibraryThing member katiekrug

This is the first in a series of mysteries featuring Simon Serailler. I read somewhere that it was also Hill’s first time working in the genre, and though that is evident in some small ways, I think she acquitted herself well, and I look forward to reading more.

The Various Haunts of Men deals

with a serial killer in the town of Lafferton. There is a lot going on here, not all of which seemed necessary to the story arc, and Hill introduces a lot of characters – many tangential – which prevented the novel from being a perfectly tight, gripping read. Those are the kind of flaws, though, that will probably diminish as the series goes on and Hill finds her footing writing mysteries. The strength of this book is the characterization of the primary figures – some of them likeable, some of them enigmatic, and a few infuriating.

And speaking of infuriating, I did throw the book down in anger about 10 pages from the end when Hill throws in a twist that completely gobsmacked me and turned my expectations for the book and the series on their head. After that outburst, I did pick it up and finished it; though still not happy, I respect Hill for the choice she made and look forward to the second entry in this series.

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LibraryThing member isabelx

I read this for a book club, and it was ultimately a disappointment after a good start., as it annoyed me more and more the further I read.

I suspected just about all the characters at one point or another (Chris Deerbon - possibly a would-be pathologist who hated having to settle for being a GP,

Ivo Serrailler - supposedly a flying doctor in Australia, but maybe that is just his family's cover story to hide the shame of him being kicked out of medical school).

I found Freya increasingly irritating, with her stalkerish behaviour - mooning outside Simon's flat and feeling sick whenever he talked to another woman. And just how stupid was she to go out for a drink with a man she already suspected of murder, and then tell him where she lived!. Simon was a cardboard character, distant and brooding, waiting for true love to unlock his inner feelings. He didn't ring true at all - I think he escaped from a Mills and Boon novel. In fact, the Serraillers are a weird and unlikely family altogether, and I don't think I want to read any more books about them.

One of the problems I had with this book was that I was never sure how old a lot of the characters were. I assumed that Aidan was fairly young, about the same age as Cat and Chris, so I had discounted him as the subject of Angela's crush. Another problem was that it was quite obviously going to be the the start of an ongoing series (although I thought the series would be about Freya) so there was a lot of extraneous stuff about the Serraillers and the town and it didn't feel finished. I hope that in the next book the author doesn't feel the need to tell her readers about Nathan's ugly face but endearing smile in every single chapter! I got it the first time, and the second, AND THE THIRD!

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LibraryThing member LNase

Susan Hill is an English author who has written many novels but never any crime novels till “The Various Haunts of Men” In this, her first Simon Serrailler crime novel, she wrote to tell the story of “why” someone would commit a crime. Set in a contemporary village in England, you meet

ordinary people whose lives are changed in an instant while going about their everyday routines.
A single woman in her mid-50’s goes out for her daily run, she vanishes. New DI, Freya Graffham has a gut feeling something is just not adding up. DI Graffham connects the disappearance of a young overweight woman in her 20’s to the first missing woman. She probes deeper till she has something to present to her boss DCI Simon Serrailler. How are two women, one male biker and one barking dog linked? All went missing without a trace on the Hill.
This first novel sets the place and the characters for the next five novels in the series. Susan Hill has you caring about the characters in a way that will have you identifying with their emotions, delight you with their actions and shock you at the end. This “who done it” crime story is an enjoyable read that leaves you wanting to find out more about DCI Simon Serrailler, his family and the village of Lafferton.

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