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

Hill, Susan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1468300504 ISBN 13: 9781468300505

Publisher: The Overlook Press, 2012

Synopsis

A particularly unpleasant murder, that of a very old woman in a housing project, rocks the town of Lafferton. The murderer has left a distinctive "sign" on the body and at the scene of crime. A couple of weeks later, a similar murder occurs, and a month or so later, so does another. Initial investigations discover that the mysterious "sign" left on the body was the calling card of a suspect who was charged with several murders in the northwest of the country, tried but acquitted on the grounds of insufficient evidence. All indications suggest that this person has simply vanished. Or is he right under their noses? Simon Serrailler is obliged to make delve deeper and scratch out answers, in this addictive mystery of surpassing darkness by the bestselling Susan Hill.

About this title

About the Author:

Susan Hill’s novels and short stories have won the Whitbread Book, Somerset Maugham, and John Llewellyn Rhys Awards and 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.

From Booklist:

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

About this edition

• Publisher: The Overlook Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1468300504
• ISBN 13: 9781468300505
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336