Product Description

A lonely woman of 53 never returns from a morning run - hidden in her cupboard is an expensive pair of cuff-links with a note: 'To You, with all possible love from your devoted, Me'. A girl vanishes in the dusk - is it to do with her teenage crush on Dava, the blue-eyed ' therapist' whose speciality is 'inner harmony'? Experienced policemen know that most missing persons either turn up or go missing on purpose. But fresh-faced DS Freya Gresham won't drop it - what could possibly link the people who disappear on 'The Hill', young and old, men and women, even a little dog? In "Various Haunts of Men", Susan Hill has created an absolutely convincing small cathedral town (within the orbit of a large urban city). She has peopled it with 'real' characters - the husband-and-wife GPs, the exceedingly dodgy surgeon, the grieving widow who is helped through the ritual of Christmas by her kindly neighbour, the down-to-earth flatmate ...and the tall blond police officer, Simon, who stands at the centre of an ordinary world in which gruesome things go on in lock-up garages.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #123075 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

From the Publisher
A new departure by one of our most accomplished fiction writers. This is the first of a series of three crime novels featuring the English policeman Simon Serrailler. It has 'popular' and 'bestseller' written all over it.

About the Author
Susan Hill has won both the Whitbread and Somerset Maugham Awards and been shortlisted for the Booker. She is the subject of one of the Vintage Living Texts. She runs her own publishing business, Longbarn Books, and edited the literary magazine, Books and Company. Her novels are set for GCSE and A Level, and her play, The Woman in Black, has been running in London's West End for 15 years.

Customer Reviews

An enjoyable crime read
This was my first experience of Susan Hill as a crime novelist and I was not disappointed, despite guessing 'whodunnit' quite early on! Initially the number of characters we are introduced to can seem a little overwhelming, but most of them do gradually fit into the story, and I am sure many (the ones not killed off in this one that is) will recur in the next two books, which I will be delving into very soon I hope. There is a slightly unusual style in that Simon Serailler is supposed to be the main character and yet we never actually get into his head in this book, he is just on the fringe, we instead get introduced to his family and background, primarily his sister, the local GP...in fact his entire family are doctors or retired doctors...making him the big disappointment of the family! Overall I feel any faults with this story are outweighed by the good points and I will definitely continue to read this series.

THE VARIOUS HAUNTS OF MEN by SUSAN HILL
I was a bit wary when I read that Susan Hill was publishing a crime novel as I know her from her literary fiction.. especially the fantastic First World Novel STRANGE MEETING. But after all she did the ghost story THE WOMAN IN BLACK so I decided to trust her. I`m so glad I did. This is a reallyt seriously good crime novel and it isn`t just a whoddunnit.. it is about why as much as who. I loved the setting, a small English town, and the growing sense of menace and fear.. I loved the characters, too and I can`t wait to have more of them. There`s a great sense of community and people inter-weaving. I did guess the criminal, actually, but it sort fo doesn`t matter.. there`s a much bigger surprise / shock than finding out the name of the murderer and I really did not see it coming. This book turns the screw just like The Woman in Black.. a nasty sense of one person`s wickedness gradually emerges. Susan Hill looks at all sorts of contemporary issues along the way, like alternative medicine and the way-o0ut fringes of New Agey stuff and whereas I didn`t always agree with her, I was compelled to read on and really did engage with the people involved. I`ve been waiting to find a good ENGLISH woman crime writer to rival people like Cornwell and take over from P.D. James and Val McDermid and Susan Hill has done it. I would recommend this gripping read to anyone.. it did that famous thing, had me up and reading till I`d finished at four the next morning.

A fantastic read
For fans of the PD James/Ruth Rendell et al genre like myself, the wait between books can be nothing short of excruciating. It's with almost indecent enthusiasm, therefore, that one snaps up a new book by a new writer (new to me anyway, as I've never read Susan Hill's literary fiction). Often, though, new writers disappoint, as can authors' attempts to forge a niche for themselves in a new market - but that's certainly not the case with The Various Haunts of Men.

This is a great read - a gripping, page-turning thriller with engaging characters, a tight and twisting plot, and a strong sense of place and time. The suspense is sustained right through to the end, and the twists of the plot are gradually revealed so that the reader solves the mystery alongside the characters. It's packed with detail too - the seemingly trivial minutiae of modern life are described with a clarity that enriches the plausibility of characters and storyline.

Highly recommended - I'm sorely tempted to rush out and purchase the second in the series in hardback when the withdrawal symptoms kick in!