Gobsmacked I am – truly!! The Pure in Heart by Susan Hill

January 27, 2008 at 12:21 am (Book review, books, Mystery fiction, The British police procedural)

I’m speechless. (Not me – not possible!) Okay – very nearly speechless. I do wish I had some fresh superlatives. Because I just finished a novel that is nothing short of superb.

Susan Hill’s procedural begins atypically: Simon Serrailler is being ferried around Venice by his friend Ernesto. Serailler carries with him an artist’s portfolio; he is searching for subjects to sketch. The scene has a slightly unworldly, timeless quality. I came to this novel under the misapprehension that the action took place in the 19th cenury. I was quickly disabused of this notion when Simon was referred to as Detective Chief Inspector.

Simon’s quest for artistic inspiration is interrupted when he is summoned back home to England by his cold, imperious father. His severely disabled sister Martha is critically ill with pneumonia. Simon’s love for Martha is deep and unfeigned; without hesitation, he rushes back to her.

Martha recovers and is returned to life in a care home. We also meet another of Simon’s sisters: Cat, a physician who is expecting her third child. Cat’s husband Chris Deerbon is also a doctor, as are both of Simon’s parents. In fact, part of the problem between Simon and his father is that the elder Serrailler has never approved of his son’s choice of profession. (There is a fourth sibling, Ivo, who lives in Australia – deliberately far, one suspects, from the madding crowd of his family.)

In addition to being a novel of crime, The Pure in Heart is very much a family story. The Serraillers, wealthy and refined, are a kind of medical aristocracy. Simon himself strikes me as a cross between Thomas Lynley and Adam Dalgliesh: he can be remote and moody at one moment, kind and generous at another. Both Dalgliesh and Simon Serrailer have esthetic gifts that they nurture as a kind of counterweight to their work in law enforcement. Dalgliesh is a published poet; Simon Serrailler is an artist.

After Martha’s recovery, Simon goes back to work without using the rest of his leave. It is just as well he decides to do this: a nine-year-old boy, David Angus, has gone missing. In a small village like Lafferton, this is an unusual, not to mention extremely upsetting event. But the feelings of bystanders are as nothing compared to the effect their son’s disappearance has on Marilyn and Alan Angus and their other child, Lucy.

Susan Hill takes us deep into the Hell that this family’s existence becomes. For some readers, it may be too deep. Very little physical violence is depicted in The Pure in Heart, but the damage to hearts and minds is described in excruciating, unsparing detail. I have not empathized so strongly with the pain of characters in a novel since I read Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories.

The first entry in this series is called The Various Haunts of Men. I may go back and read it, although I rather wish I had read it first.

I’m not giving anything away when I say that at the conclusion of The Pure in Heart, several crucial plot points are left unresolved. This was one of the many things I loved about this deeply intelligent, beautifully written book.

[Here is the entry for Susan Hill on the British Council’s Contemporary Writers in the UK. This is a really useful site which, among other things, gives you author contact information.]