Title: The Comforts of Home
Author: Susan Hill
Series: Simon Serrailer (#9)
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
[Synopsis]
DC Simon Serrailler’s last, devastating case was nearly the death of him and left him confronting a new reality
Recovering on a remote Scottish island, his peace doesn’t last long. He is pulled in to a murder inquiry by the overstretched local police. A newcomer, popular with the islanders, has died in perplexing circumstances. The community’s reactions are complicated and fragile.It’s good to be back on the job. And when Simon returns to Lafferton, an arsonist is on the rampage and a woman whose daughter disappeared some years before is haunting the police station seeking closure. She will not let it rest, and Simon is called in to do a cold-case review.
At home, Simon is starting to get used to having a new brother-in-law – in the form of his Chief Constable Kieron Bright. His sister Cat has embarked on a new way of practising medicine, and his nephew Sam is trying to work out what to do with his life. And then their tricky father, Richard, turns up again like a bad penny.
In this gripping new Serrailler thriller, Simon’s personal and professional lives intertwine in more complex and demanding ways than ever before.
[My Review]
A new Simon Serrailer novel is always one to look forward to, and with such a long gap since the The Soul of Discretion (4 years, although there were some novellas inbetween), it is definitely highly anticipated. It also felt, to me, like a bit of a different offering.
For one thing, there felt like there was way less police procedural and detective work – although the plot consists of various crimes, because of the situation Simon is in, he’s not right ‘in the action’ so to speak, so this felt very different to the rest of the series. Definitely less dramatic, but not necessarily less enjoyable.
There’s a noticable absence of darkness or grit, which I did miss, but instead the story focuses on characters and their relationships to one another, and for me this made up for it. In The Comforts of Home the reader learns a lot more about various characters and for me that meant that the story was still well worth reading. I don’t want to give too much away but from the synopsis it’s clear that Simon is ‘away’ recovering and this is the main reason for the change in pace, so it all makes sense.
I don’t want to give much away but I definitely still enjoyed this novel, perhaps not as much as the earlier books in the series, but still to the point that I didn’t want it to end. Looknig forward to what future books in this series have to offer!
[Rating: 3.5/5]
Many thanks to Vintage Publishing for providing a copy of this book on which I chose to write an honest and unbiased review.