OPINION:
THE SOUL OF DISCRETION: A CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT SIMON SERRAILLER MYSTERY
By Susan Hill
Overlook, $26.95, 336 pages
Evil lives in Lafferton, a quiet English town where a child’s screams in the night go unnoticed.
Those cries are a clue to a series of horrifyingly well-organized crimes committed by a sophisticated and select group of pedophiles who rank socially from the local shopkeeper to the aristocracy. Yet there is a small notebook in which a dying woman has written dates and memories of what she has heard. She has left the notebook in the hands of a friend who turns it over to the police, who are baffled by the mystery of disappearing children. It is in those sparse notes that they find an arrow pointing to horror.
This is Susan Hill at her brooding best, with a sinister mystery in which her most sordid villains seem to claw their way out of a cesspool of cruelty and snuff killings. Ms. Hill’s strength as a writer often lies in her focus on the psychological rather than the physical. Even her lead character, Detective Inspector Simon Serrailler, is an enigmatic man of many personal problems as his lover Rachel has discovered when she tries to cross the personal lines behind which he lives.
There is a thread of irony in the author’s digression into a rape in a country club while her plot is deep in an investigation into the torture of children. The rape victim’s account of her assault by an old friend (who is part of the Serrailler family) is even doubted by her husband. He operates on the unfortunately familiar theory that his wife flirts too much and, of course, his old friend, a pillar of the community, would never do such a thing. What she needs to do, he advises, is put it out of her mind and take a nice vacation. And on the basis of existing evidence, there is a possibility that the rapist may get away with it. Only a rape crisis center puts faith in the story of the distraught woman and offers her support while she looks to her unsympathetic husband for courage.
An aura of personal disaster permeates Ms. Hill’s plots, yet only once in this book does she descend into a scene of graphic physical violence that all too often clutters thrillers. Her accounts of therapy meetings among convicted pedophiles at a prison specifically designed to deal with their needs are underplayed and subtle.
The play of personalities between sick minds is what the author does very well indeed, especially when her detective participates in what he knows are perilous sessions with men who are terrifyingly alert to any mistakes he makes in pretending that he shares their sickness. The man he is tracking down proves unusually cooperative because he trusts Serrailler. The detective must come to terms with the man he is pursuing, and he also knows that the circle of evil that surrounds him may be impossible to escape. He is trapped in a situation far worse than he had imagined it would be. Worst of all is that he cannot provide the information the pedophiles demand to show that he is indeed one of them. When he tries to escape, he seals his fate and comes very close to ending his life.
It is a perilous assignment for her detective, and while he plays his part to the point that he breaks the pedophiliac ring, he pays a very heavy price for it. The violence he suffers leaves the reader wondering how long it will take him to get back to work. Only his sister Catherine can penetrate the dim corridors that he allows others to enter. Rachel, whom he loves, has discovered she cannot reach him and that her affection for him is no match for his strange detachment from most of humanity.
Moreover there is real bitterness in the family’s awareness that they must now cope with the scandal of rape so close to home that it seems unlikely they can ever survive the psychological disaster, let alone recover. There are many kinds of ghosts, and this author explores all of their possibilities. Clearly a sequel is in the offing, and it will be most interesting to see how she restores Serrailler to life, let alone sanity.
• Muriel Dobbin is a former White House and national political reporter for McClatchy newspapers and the Baltimore Sun.
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