Books in series
#1
The Various Haunts of Men
2004
Having transferred to the small cathedral town of Lafferton from London's "Met," police detective Freya Graffham explores her new community and becomes fascinated by Chief Insp. Simon Serrailler, her enigmatic superior. Though she fits well within the local police force, she finds herself unable to let go what seems like a routine missing persons report on a middle-aged spinster. When yet more townspeople turn up missing, her hunch is verified and a serious police search begins, bringing her into closer proximity with Serrailler at the same time it exposes her to danger.
#2
The Pure in Heart
2005
A little boy is snatched as he stands with his satchel at the gate of his home, waiting for his lift to school. A severely handicapped young woman hovers between life and death. And an ex-con finds it impossible to go straight. The Pure in Heart is a crime novel arising from character and circumstances, about the psychology of crime, something more enthralling than plain thrillers or whodunits. In Lafferton, Serrailler's town, Susan Hill has brilliantly created a community with detail so sharp and true to life that readers feel that these people are their own neighbors and friends. But there is terror and evil in their very midst. There are no easy answers in The Pure of Heart, a magnificent novel about the realities of police work and the sometimes desperate humanity of family. Haunting and truthful, gripping and convincing, it is a thrilling achievement.
#3
The Risk of Darkness
2006
Child abduction, crazy grief of a widowed husband, a derangement that turns to obsession and threats, violence and terror add up in newest cases for handsome, introverted Simon Serrailler. His cool reserve has broken the hearts of several women. Now his own heart troubled by a feisty female priest with red hair.
#4
The Vows of Silence
2006
We met the enigmatic and brooding Simon Serrailler in The Various Haunts of Men and got to know him better in The Pure in Heart and The Risk of Darkness. The Vows of Silence, the fourth crime novel featuring Chief Inspector Serrailler, is perhaps even more compulsive and convincing than its predecessors.
A gunman is terrorizing young women in the cathedral town of Laffterton. What, if anything, links the apparently random murders? Is the marksman with the rifle the same as the killer with the handgun? With the complexity and character study that earned raves for The Pure in Heart and the relentless pacing and plot twists of The Various Haunts of Men, The Vows of Silence is truly the work of a writer at the top of her form.
#5
The Shadows in the Street
2010
Serrailler has just wrapped up a particularly exhausting and difficult case and is on sabbatical on a far-flung Scottish island when he is called back to Lafferton by the Chief Constable. Two local prostitutes have been found strangled. When the wife of the St. Michael's Cathedral Dean goes missing and then another respectable woman is taken on her way to work, the townspeople grow angry and afraid. Serrailler is in the greatest danger of his life.
#6
The Betrayal of Trust
2011
Freak weather and flash floods all over southern England. Half of Lafferton is afloat. A landslip on the Moor has closed the bypass and, as the rain slowly drains away, a shallow grave - and a skeleton - are exposed. The remains are identified as those of missing teenager, Harriet Lowther, last seen 16 years ago.
#7
A Question of Identity
2012
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.
#8
The Soul of Discretion
2014
The cathedral town of Lafferton seems idyllic, but in many ways it is just like any other place. As part of the same rapidly changing world, it shares the same hopes and fears, and the same kinds of crime, as any number of towns up and down the land.
When one day DC Simon Serrailler is called in by Lafferton’s new Chief Constable, Kieron Bright, he is met by four plainclothes officers. He is asked to take the lead role in a complex, potentially dangerous undercover operation and must leave town immediately, without telling anyone – not even his girlfriend Rachel, who has only just moved in with him.
Meanwhile, Simon’s sister Cat is facing difficult choices at work that will test her dedication to the NHS. But an urgent call about her and Simon’s father, Richard, soon presents her with a far greater challenge much closer to home.
To complete his special op, Simon must inhabit the mind of the worst kind of criminal. As the op unfolds, Lafferton is dragged into the sort of case every town dreads. And Simon faces the fight of his life.
#8.5
A Breach of Security
2014
When a bunch of neo-fascist thugs named The Bulldogs attack a Gay pride march in the sleepy country town of Lafferton, detective Simon Serrailler moves quickly to find the assailants. He’s already got his hands full making security arrangements for a memorial service to honour soldiers returning from Afghanistan. When anonymous threats come in, Serrailler wonders if the Bulldogs are behind these too – and worries that they know the Prince of Wales will be in attendance. As the day approaches, the threats intensify, and Serrailler finds himself racing against the clock to prevent catastrophe.
#8.6
Hero
2016
When Simon Serrailler was a rookie constable with the Met, he did something reckless in the course of a night's work which caused a man's death. But his act was praised by his colleagues and he was called a hero.
Years later, now a Detective Chief Superintendent who has been badly injured in the course of duty, he receives a medal for bravery at Buckingham Palace, while recollecting that fateful night of his early career, when chance disguised itself as bravery.
#8.7
Old Haunts
2018
One hot summer’s day, an old flame turns up at Lafferton HQ and Simon Serrailler is catapulted back to his days as a fresh-faced PC in the Met.
That long febrile summer in the early 1990s, London was reeling from one IRA bomb warning after another. Sirens. Blue lights. Tyres screaming. People running. The army called in. And Simon in the thick of it. Until he’s pulled aside and put on a very different kind of his first undercover op awaits. Will the young Simon be able to hold his nerve? Or is he walking into a trap?
#9
The Comforts of Home
2018
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.
#9.5
Revenge
2018
A new Simon Serrailler short story from Susan Hill, throwing Simon into a case like no other: an effigy is hanging in the woods, and soldiers are on the run from demons in their past
Simon Serrailler is awoken into a hazy dawn by the sharp ringing of his phone. Called out to the scene, he’s told that there’s a body strung up in tranquil Harnham Woods. But on closer inspection it’s an effigy – a carefully made dummy, stirring in the breeze. Simon knows that this is no practical joke. It’s a message.
The gruesome result of the search will show that he was right. And the trail will lead him into a dark history of deceit, subterfuge and the damaged lives of soldiers recently returned from Afghanistan. But the question remains: who has finally got their revenge?
#10
The Benefit of Hindsight
2020
Serrailler must confront his demons as Lafferton experiences a series of shocking crimes in this 10th book in Susan Hill’s shattering crime series.
Susan Hill stuns readers once again in The Benefit of Hindsight, the 10th book in her celebrated mystery series. Now recuperated after the violent incident that cost him his arm—and nearly his life—DCS Serrailler has returned to work, though he prefers to spend his spare time sketching the medieval angels being restored on the cathedral roof. With crime rates down, Lafferton has been quiet, until one night when two men open their front door to a distressing scene. Serrailler makes a serious error of judgment when handling the incident, and the stress of this, combined with the ongoing trauma of losing his arm, takes its toll. In the tradition of the fabulous mysteries of Ruth Rendell and P. D. James, The Benefit of Hindsight is Susan Hill’s best work yet—a chilling new addition to a highly acclaimed series.
#11
A Change of Circumstance
2021
Simon Serrailler finds himself in devastating new territory as a sophisticated drugs network sets its sights on Lafferton and the surrounding villages
DCS Simon Serrailler has long regarded drugs ops in the Lafferton area as a waste of time. Small-time dealers are picked up outside the local secondary school, they're given a fine or a suspended and away they go. And rinse and repeat. But when the body of a young drug addict is found in neighbouring Starly, the case pulls Simon into a whole new way of running drugs. The foot soldiers? Vulnerable local kids like Brookie and Olivia, who will give Simon a bitter taste of this new landscape...
Author
Susan Hill
Author · 61 books
Susan Hill was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire in 1942. Her hometown was later referred to in her novel A Change for the Better (1969) and some short stories especially "Cockles and Mussels". She attended Scarborough Convent School, where she became interested in theatre and literature. Her family left Scarborough in 1958 and moved to Coventry where her father worked in car and aircraft factories. Hill states that she attended a girls’ grammar school, Barr's Hill. Her fellow pupils included Jennifer Page, the first Chief Executive of the Millennium Dome. At Barrs Hill she took A levels in English, French, History and Latin, proceeding to an English degree at King's College London. By this time she had already written her first novel, The Enclosure which was published by Hutchinson in her first year at university. The novel was criticised by The Daily Mail for its sexual content, with the suggestion that writing in this style was unsuitable for a "schoolgirl". Her next novel Gentleman and Ladies was published in 1968. This was followed in quick succession by A Change for the Better, I'm the King of the Castle, The Albatross and other stories, Strange Meeting, The Bird of Night, A Bit of Singing and Dancing and In the Springtime of Year, all written and published between 1968 and 1974. In 1975 she married Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells and they moved to Stratford upon Avon. Their first daughter, Jessica, was born in 1977 and their second daughter, Clemency, was born in 1985. Hill has recently founded her own publishing company, Long Barn Books, which has published one work of fiction per year. Librarian's Note: There is more than one author by this name.
