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A flash flood swamps Lafferton and up on the nearby moor, a landslip caused by the freak weather exposes the shallow grave of a young woman, quickly identified as missing teenager, Heather Lowther, last seen sixteen years ago in the village, waiting for a bus. Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Serrailler is already struggling with a combination of budget cuts and staff shortages and despairs of having enough resources to investigate even one cold case, but it isn't long before a second body appears in the same location, making matters even worse. At the same time, Serrailler's sister, Dr Cat Deerbon, is also having to fight for funding, but in her case it's for a hospice threatened with closure. The theme woven throughout this book is one of the frailties of human beings, beset by the twin processes – often interlinked – of illness and ageing. Hill presents a grim picture of illnesses such as Motor Neurone Disease (ALS) and Parkinson's Disease and theIR effects on their sufferers. Jocelyn Foster is suffering from the former, forced to confront the knowledge that she will soon be a prisoner in her own body, unable to leave it at a time of her own choosing. Against the wishes of her daughter and her friends, Jocelyn insists on travelling to a private clinic in Switzerland that promises to assist people like her in bringing an end to their own lives. But the clinic is a far cry from what she had hoped for and Jocelyn returns home, shocked and traumatized, to seek an alternative closer to home. When Serrailler reluctantly attends an official function in place of his boss, he isn't expecting to enjoy himself, nor was he expecting to find himself attracted to and intrigued by Rachel Wyatt, married to a man over twenty years older than her, ravaged by Parkinson's Disease, and so the theme of the cruelty of illness continues. Not knowing Serrailler from previous books, I found myself surprised by how quickly he seems to fall for Rachel and, for a senior policeman in what appears to be a reasonably close-knit community, he seems remarkably unconcerned about the effect on his career on embarking on an affair with a married woman. In that respect, I felt that Hill was guilty of shoe-horning yet another moral dilemma into a book already dangerously overloaded with them. While Hill writes convincingly on the subject of illness, both physical and mental, her exploration of the morality of difficult issues like assisted suicide seems more one-dimensional, with little or no attempt to present the other side of the argument to the one so vigorously espoused by Cat Deerbon, who is vehemently against any suggestion that the medical profession should aid those wanting to end their own lives. My guess is that Dr Deerbon is very much speaking with the voice of her creator. The police work in the book takes second place to its morality tale and the unraveling of the mystery surrounding the death of the two young women provides a hurried and rather unsatisfactory ending, as does the final twist concerning the activities taking place behind the scenes of a local nursing home. It is possible that Hill is setting up future plot strands here, but even if that is the case, I would have preferred a more complete ending rather than the several loose threads that were left behind in the rush to conclude matters. § Linda Wilson is a writer, and retired solicitor, with an interest in archaeology and cave art, who now divides her time between England and France.
Reviewed by Linda Wilson, October 2011
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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