The Betrayal of Trust

The Betrayal of Trust by Susan Hill is the sixth book in the DCI Simon Serrailler Series. As always, Susan Hill offers a mix of police procedural and social commentary.

This time, crime very much takes a back seat as social and moral issues are explored. The Betrayal of Trust is the series darkest and most enthralling of novel so far.

Author Susan Hill sheds light on many dark and often unspoken issues. Aging, assisted suicide, euthanasia, and living with a terminal illness are all examined closely. Virtually all of the well rounded characters are dealing with death and grieving in one way or another.

Simon's sister, physician Cat Deerborn, is still grieving the loss of her husband to cancer. One of her patients, Jocelyn Forbes, is show more stricken with Motor Neuron Disease, also known as ALS, and is trying to come to terms with this. The town of Lafferton, where all of the action takes place , is struggling to fund a hospice, and yet another person agonizes over care homes for her partner, now stricken with dementia.

If this book sounds dark, it is. However, as many of us have struggled with aging parents, terminal illness, palliative care as well as relatives who have wish for assisted suicide, I suspect that this novel will resonate with many of us. I found the situations dealt with to be stark and true to life , and I congratulate Susan Hill on her ability to tackle dark and challenging issues without sentimentality but with realism and compassion.

This novel was a powerful, dark and illuminating read. It will stay with me for a long time.

4.5 stars. show less

Susan Hill is a prolific and prize winning author, but a new name for me. Her latest release The Betrayal of Trust, is the sixth book in her Simon Serrailler crime novels.

Simon is Detective Chief Superintendent in Lafferton, a city in England. When a severe storm hits Lafferton, a skelton is unearthed. Could it be that of a young girl gone missing sixteen years ago? And then a second skeleton is found nearby.

Cat is Simon's sister - a doctor and supporter of the local hospice. Both Cat and Simon are dealing with budget cuts at their institutions and trying to do much with too little.

Although this is billed as a crime novel, Betrayal of Trust was much more than that. I was immediately drawn into the lives of the two main characters. Their show more emotions and thoughts rang true and allowed us into their quite believable lives, grappling with grief, loss, love, family relationships and the business of everyday living. This made it a much more 'personal' read.

A parallel plot line dealing with terminal illness, assisted suicide and mental illness brings a lot of food for thought to the table. Viewpoints for and against are discussed through a patient, doctor and family members. Hills tackles a very difficult topic quite thoughtfully.

These seemingly disparate stories converge in the most unlikely way. Death and betrayal in many forms permeates both plot lines.The ending is complete, but left with enough threads to continue with in book seven. And I want to see where Simon and Cat's lives go from here - I really liked these characters.

Those looking for a thoughtful, intelligent mystery will find it here. Definitely a satisfying read. show less

You'll see a number of negative reviews here that are mostly people who are disappointed that Hill doesn't stick to the usual mystery structure in these books. If that is a deal-breaker for you, then this series probably isn't for you. But there is a lot else to recommend them.

For one thing, the narrative scope of these novels goes way beyond the individual books. So a novel may stop in the middle of a case. Or a novel may close with the close of a case, leaving a whole bunch of sub-plots unresolved. It is not as if the cases or the volumes are treated completely arbitrarily, but the structure is like that of O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels--what really matters is the narrative arc of the whole series, the structure of the individual show more novels is secondary.

Also, Hill uses the mystery as a vehicle for dealing with a lot of serious life issues. Difficult familial issues, illness, death, suicide, spiritualism, having and raising children, loss, giving of and protecting oneself and on and on. She creates three-dimensional characters, puts them into these life situations and lets them play out realistically. Thematically, they all contribute to the overall arc of the work. As far as plot goes, some feed into the main plot significantly, some do not.

So, if you are looking for a respite from all the serious issues in your life, or you need for a mystery to stick closely to a particular structure, then you'd be better to look elsewhere. If you are willing to put yourself into Hill's hands a bit and let the eternal worries and crises of life play out in your story, then these novels are definitely worth a try.

From a literary standpoint, rather than a generic expectation standpoint, Hill usually does all of this quite well. Here, I think, she is a bit heavy-handed in pushing her theme hard in seemingly every facet of the story, but all in all this is another strong outing for Hill's Serrailler series. show less

The discovery of two bodies provides the latest case for police detective Simon Serrailler in the fictional cathedral city of Lafferton in South West England. This is the seventh book in the series and, like its predecessors, the criminal investigation is just one element in a novel that also digs deeply into human emotions and tackles a raft of serious issues including the impact of the financial crisis on public services and charities, Motor Neurone Disease, voluntary euthanasia and dementia. Given that the story opens with serious flooding in the town, one might even add climate change to that list of topics, although the flood is primarily a plot to device, used to bring the bodies to the surface.

Those who have read previous books show more in the series will be aware of Serrailler’s difficult relationship with his father and his tendency to rely on his sister for emotional support and to provide a welcoming family home to drop in on. He does not have any children of his own, having for various reasons never settled into a permanent relationship. One reason is that he treats the women in his life quite badly, another is that he seems to have a habit of getting involved with women who are as complicated as he is and equally unable, or unwilling, to commit. There is sufficient explanation of these continuing threads to ensure that this latest instalment will work as a stand-alone novel, however, I would urge anyone who thinks these books may be to their liking to go back to the beginning and read ‘The Various Haunts of Men’. Anyone who enjoys one of these books will be eager to read them all, and they are best enjoyed in series order.

Despite its daunting topics, perhaps even because of them, I found The Betrayal of Trust, like the rest of the series, a hugely satisfying read. Susan Hill writes sentences that glide down as easily as one’s favourite liquid refreshment (a warm cup of tea in my case). She does not use her novels as a soapbox from which to preach her own view on contentious moral issues, but instead provides a sympathetic depiction of the dilemmas faced by her characters and allows her readers to reach their own judgements. By the end of the book, a doctor seeking to provide an English alternative to the Swiss suicide clinics is compromised by resorting to violence to maintain the secrecy of his illegal activities but, by the same token, he has previously been sketched as a caring man, rather than as a simplistic ‘Doctor Death’ stereotype. Moreover, there is a reminder - for one character a painful first discovery - of a mercy killing in a previous book, carried out by another caring medical professional and, so far at least, treated with a Holmesian turning of the blind eye. The way the actions of these two doctors are handled leaves me none the wiser as to exactly where the author stands on this issue, which is perhaps as it should be. It will be interesting to see if this remains the case as the implications of these actions unravel further, as they surely must, in the next book in the series.

The church plays very little part this time, compared to previous instalments which saw Simon closely involved with a vicar troubled about her vocation, and featured a murderer close to the heart of the cathedral community. Whilst her opinions on euthanasia may be hard to gauge, one does get the distinct impression that the author is not terribly keen on certain evangelical strands within the Anglican Communion. In this latest book, one of their number is shown coping quite badly with his own terminal illness, finding it difficult to understand why prayers for a miraculous cure appear to be doing unanswered. Simon’s sister Cat, a Christian in a more traditional Anglican mould, states God is “not a magician”. I suspect that Cat’s ethical viewpoint is much closer to Susan Hill’s, so it will be intriguing to see how Cat deals with Simon’s revelation about their sister as the series continues.

You may notice that my comments relate more to Serrailler’s family life and to the moral issues played out in this book rather than to the criminal case that forms its spine. That would be a fair observation. I often read crime novels motivated by an interest in the investigators rather than the investigation. Susan Hill serves that interest very well.

Above all, and not least as the story rushes towards its conclusion, ‘The Betrayal of Trust’ shows that dramatic tension and series social issues can exist side by side to create quality, one might say literary, crime fiction that has something to say, though not to preach, about the society we live in today. show less

The Betrayal of Trust is the sixth in Susan Hill's series about Chief Superintendent Simon Serrailler set in Lafferton, a quiet English town apparently not far from London. After a huge storm uncovers a shallow grave in which the skeletons of two young women lie, he is assigned to the cold case; it doesn't take long to determine that one of the bodies is that of young Harriet, a 15-year-old who disappeared suddenly some 16 years earlier. That fact, and the subsequent discovery of the name of the second woman, starts Simon on a journey into the past, into memories and the lack thereof. At the same time, Simon experiences something that has never happened to him before: he falls in love, with a married woman. He's always had pleasant but show more casual relationships with women, and he has no idea what to do about this situation, especially as Rachel feels the same way but would never leave her much older, very ill husband. And then there's Mrs. Forbes, a patient of Simon's sister Cat, who has developed a terrible motor neuron disease that is slowly robbing her of her independence and her ability to care for herself, and there's Lenny, trying to cope with the dementia of her long-time partner Olive, and trying to forget the secret they share as Olive has forgotten it.... There are many threads in this novel, as is usually the case with Susan Hill: here we have assisted suicide, murder, the fogging of the mind and associated age-related health problems all bound up together, and only Simon to unravel the pieces, all the while trying to sort out his own emotions. Quite satisfying; recommended! show less

I would like to add a slight dissenting note to these reviews. I found this book extremely depressing which given the subject matter is not surprising, but the relentlessly glum tone and the incessant heaping of distressing relationships and illnesses on the characters and their loved ones throughout this series has gone too far in my opinion. Many crime novels are depressing, but those that I enjoy tend to have a more vivid style of writing or are lightened by humour even if it is rather dark.

A cold case is revived when storm water unearths skelatal remains in a rural location near a highway overpass. The case lands on the desk of brooding and intrepid DCS Simon Serrailler, who is intrigued but also busy with other cases. However, the cold case gains urgency when a second body is recovered from the same site. Acting with little help from the department, Serrailler pursues answers to questions that have long lain dormant and re-opens wounds long healed over when he learns the identity of the first body (a 15 year old missing person case that made headlines at the time), and then the second body (that of a girl whose disappearance caused hardly a ripple). The plot makes effective use of police procedure as Serrailler closes in show more on the perpetrator, but also veers in other directions to consider issues such as assisted suicide and the care of dementia patients. Along the way we revisit Serrailler's family and catch up on his sister and father. Midway through the novel Simon embarks on a smouldering relationship with a woman he meets at a social function. Hill artfully weaves the various elements into an clever tapestry, creating a novel that is engaging on several levels. An abrupt and somewhat less than satisfying ending prevents The Betrayal of Trust from getting four stars. Still, a worthy addition to a crime series that has its many followers eagerly anticipating the next installment. show less