My thanks to Carmella Lowkis (Senior Marketing Executive) and Vintage books for the invite to take part in this blog tour celebrating 20 years of the Simon Serrailler series by Susan Hill! Scroll to the bottom to see who else is taking part and check out their reviews of other books in the series. The book I choose to read was A QUESTION OF IDENTITY and my thoughts are below 👇🏻
I first want to mention that one of my all time favourite books is Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Why is this important to this review? Just like Dostoevsky, Susan Hill in this novel, poses thought-provoking questions about crime and morality… which was also the focus of my first degree, an Hons BA in Philosophy. I feel like I was meant to pick up this book and now that I’m hooked, the rest of the series will be added to my TBR! But I digress…Let’s get back to my review before I lose you!
The story is set in the fictional Lafferton and involves the murders of several elderly women and a killer who is given a new identity because circumstances 🫣😱 have caused him to lose his original identity. (Not a spoiler, it’s in the blurb!). I thought the storyline was particularly clever and I was thoroughly gripped as I followed the MC on his hunt for the killer. The pace was perfect, there were moments of pure tension and I’m pretty sure OMFG left my lips a few times – a sure sign of an excellent thriller in my books! For a crime thriller, there was also a lot of emotion involved – I enjoyed how the author toyed with my own morality. The main character, DCS Simon Serrailler also has personal problems to deal with outside of this case which brings a relatable quality to the character.
Would I recommend this book? You bet your sweet ass I would. I loved the sense of place, the crime, the authenticity of the characters, the intensity and the pure emotion this novel evoked. It was chilling, kept my full attention and I look forward now to checking out more in this series!
