Simon Serrailler

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...

Investigating a cold case while recovering from a near-fatal injury, Simon Serrailler finds his personal and professional lives intertwining in unexpected ways when his constable brother-in-law suffers a setback at the same time an arsonist begins a deadly rampage.

Susan Hill's third crime novel, after The Various Haunts of Men and The Pure in Heart, is perhaps even more compulsive and convincing than its predecessors. It explores the crazy grief of a widowed husband, a derangement that turns into obsession, threats, violence and terror. Meanwhile handsome, introverted heartbreaker Simon Serrailler finds his own heart troubled by the newest recruit to the Cathedral staff: a feisty female Anglican priest with...

From the outside, the cathedral town of Lafferton seems idyllic, but in many ways it is just like any other place. It suffers from the same kinds of crime, is subject to the same pressures from a rapidly changing world, and has the same hopes and fears as any number of towns up and down the land. When Simon Serrailler is called in by Lafferton's new Chief Constable, Kieran Bright, he is met by two plainclothes officers, who ask him to take the principal...

Chief Inspector Serrailler investigates a seemingly random series of murders targeting young women in the cathedral town of Lafferton, cases he is certain are related in spite of their varying methods.