The Vows of Silence

The Vows of Silence is the fourth in Susan Hill's Simon Serrailler crime series. This novel finds Serrailler on the trail of a sniper randomly targeting young women. The crimes are puzzling and all the more disturbing because there is no decernable pattern to them, and Serrailler wears himself out trying to come up with the answer. Much of the action is investigative and procedural, but as with the other books in the series, Hill gives us the human dimension of her hero's life as well. Simon's sister Cat has just returned from Australia, where she and her husband Chris have been working (both are doctors). But almost immediately Chris falls ill, and a good deal of the story is devoted to his failing health and the toll it takes on the show more family. Serrailler is also resentful of his father's relationship with a woman who, as he sees it, thinks she can replace his deceased mother. The Vows of Silence is a worthy addition to a series that blurs the line between crime and literary fiction. show less

This is Book Four of the mystery series by U.K. author Susan Hill involving Detective Chief Inspector Simon Serrailler and set in fictional Lafferton, a Cathedral city in the South of England.

This is yet another book in which criminal and medical issues share the stage. In this book, there are two non-criminal issues that most fully capture Hill’s attention. First, she focuses on the pain of the caretaker, who not only has to watch a loved one dying, but also sort out a host of unexpected psychological reactions to the situation. Second, she gives attention to the children, both small and grown, who must adjust to changes in their parents’ lives, either because of death or remarriage.

Simon Serrailler, the axle around which the wheel show more of the story turns, is now Detective Chief Superintendent, and also serves on a special inter-bureau taskforce: Serious Incident Flying Taskforce, or SIFT. He is basically a loner, except for his interaction with his sister Cat - who is a doctor - and her family. There are a variety of plot strands like wheel spokes that eventually coalesce in the center and involve both Simon and Cat.

One strand concerns Phil and Helen, two people in their forties who get together via an internet dating service. Both of their first spouses died of disease. Phil wonders how he feels about Helen and in a wonderful, almost poetic way, contemplates the nature of love in a remembrance of his first wife:

"What was love? He had loved Sheila. Of course he had, though love had changed every year, as love did. Early love. Surprised love. Warm love. Protective. Married. Parent. Everyday. Companionable. Happy. Frightened. Anguished. Desolate. Bereaved love. Grief.”

Helen’s children are still living at home. Her daughter is happy for her, but her son, not the most stable in any event, burns with resentment.

Simon Serrailler is in a similar position. His mother died the year before, and now his father has come home from vacation with a younger woman, and they begin living together. Although the rest of the family immediately takes to Judith, Simon can’t stand seeing another woman standing in his mother’s kitchen, using her bathroom, and just being alive when his mother his dead. And Judith’s reaction to Simon’s rejection is so apt. At first she tells herself “Children react like this… The best way was to carry on as normal and let them come round. Or not…..” Still, it’s hard on her. She says to herself:

"'I shouldn’t be here…. I am an unwelcome intruder.' She felt, as she had often felt as a widow, ill at ease and out of place in the midst of someone else’s family, another person’s home. It was the loneliest and the bleakest of feelings.”

And then there is another strand with one of the recurring characters being diagnosed with a brain tumor. His thoughts about dying, and his wife’s thoughts about loving him desperately but wanting it all to be over with, are beautifully realistic and perceptive. In one heart-breaking scene, the character explains:

"'The thing is,' he said, 'it's not only that I don't want to leave you and I don't want to leave the children. I don't want to miss them growing up. I don't want not to be here, doing what we do, in this place. The thing is...it isn't even that I don't want to die.'"

We have no vocabulary adequate to describe this frustration and hurt and sense of unfairness. But I think the author does an admirable job of showing that it's there.

Of course there’s a serial killer too; one who’s targeting brides. You’d think young couples would get the message and elope, but I suppose even the threat of death doesn’t compare to having the Cinderella moment. Thus the marriage ceremonies continue, until the sniper is surprised by the identity of the bride and makes a mistake.

Evaluation: I have to say I like the mysteries by Hill more for their medical themes than the criminal activity. She has a lovely sensitivity about problems like disease, aging, dying, loneliness, fear, anger, and other difficult life issues. If she did a television show, I think it would be a combination of “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” and “Grey’s Anatomy.” show less

Susan Hill's Simon Serailler novels are shelved as mysteries in libraries and bookstores, and here on my virtual shelves as well. Having read the first (The Various Haunts of Men (Simon Serrailler, #1)) and the fourth (this one), and some reviews, I think they are actually domestic fiction about a family, one of whose members happens to be a policeman.
I enjoyed both books, and will probably seek out the middle two and any sequels. But I enjoyed them as domestic fiction more than for the mystery. I learned from some of the other reviews that each of the four books has Simon dealing with a serial killer, which stretches credulity given that the series is set in a relatively small cathedral town. I read a lot of police procedurals, and show more serial killers seem to crop up a lot, partly because in most real-life homicides the police know more or less "whodunnit." The need for proof can make tales of homicides which are domestic, gang-related, or committed during the commission of another felony interesting; but it's still a little more difficult to come up with plausible scenarios for detective work under those circumstances. So, nearly every writer of police procedurals has to have an occasional serial killer to deal with. But I'm just tired of them.
In a sense, though, the serial killer is not really the focus of The Vows of Silence. In fact, more people die in the book from accident, suicide and natural causes than by the hand of the killer. Although some chapters put us inside the killer's head, the victims are given equal time and their deaths are described more empathetically than is sometimes the case. Serailler seems to take a long time to come to a solution, but he has a lot of personal concerns to deal with, and in the end, those are the portions of the book I will remember. Recommended, but not as a mystery. show less

This was my first reading of the Simon Serrailler series even though it's the fourth book of the serie. It was a gripping reading. Simon has his hands full. Not only has he to find a killer who brutally shoots young newly married women but also in his family there too are major problems. His brother-in-law suffers from a brain tumor and the survival prospects look bleak. In addition, he learns that his father has a new girlfriend. He can not get used to the fact that somebody else takes his dead mother's place. He gets no rest and sleep while he hunts the murderer. Furthermore, there is a side story, in which a widow finds a new partner. Her son is not at all agreed and draws his personal consequence. On the emotional level all stories show more are interrelated.
I like the story and will read more of this series. show less

The fourth book in the Simon Serrailler series, a stunner. The “mystery” is secondary to my mind. The important stories here are about Cat and her family, a woman named Helen Creedy, Jane, and Simon. Even Richard Serrailler, Simon and Cat’s father.

There is a mystery, of course. Women are being killed, and there doesn’t seem to be a pattern. They are stalked, or killed seemingly at random. Cat and her family have returned from Australia. Simon is still trying to figure out what he wants from life and is seriously trying to understand whether he wants a serious relationship with a woman or doesn’t. Jane is trying to figure out what to do with her life. Helen Creedy, a widow, meets a man via the Internet and her son has a hard show more time adapting the idea. There is a sense of foreboding with these stories. Tragedy could strike. What could it be? Which story will have tragedy? Might someone be murdered? Die?

The book is very hard to put down.

The writing is clear, fluid, and changes point of view frequently. Now we are in Cat’s head, Simon’s head, Jane’s head, Helen Creedy’s head, Tom Creedy’s head, the murderer’s head. Each point of view is shaded differently, making the “voice” authentic. I could easily see meeting all these people (well, except for the murderer) and enjoying time with them. They are painted sympathetically, even when they act in ways we consider abhorrent or childish. Susan Hill develops her characters beautifully, making you love them while understanding that they are, alas, just human, like everybody else. It is quite comforting to feel this, actually. show less

Where I got the book: audiobook on Audible.

Ah, Lafferton, Lafferton. A small cathedral town must be a terrible place to live if serial killers pop up as regularly as they do in this series—I wouldn’t dare leave the house. Add in the high incidence of Sudden Death from natural causes, suicide and bizarre accidents, and you get the impression that the Grim Reaper once visited the town for a short vacation and liked it so much that he stayed.

The Serrailler family and friends soap opera really lets rip in this novel, with Simon suffering much angst over his sister’s personal tragedy, having a fit of the sulks over his father’s love life (I wouldn’t say he’s cold, our Simon, as much as immature) and SUFFERING from, yet again, show more thwarted love. Because letting your detective have a normal love life would be—what? Too cheerful? Hill’s actually not all that good at the love bits and certainly not great with sex, which sort of happens offstage and is referred to in a very offhand British way without anyone ever getting worked up. I always find myself thinking of that scene in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life where John Cleese and his wife make mundane small talk while performing the act for a classroom full of bored schoolboys.

There’s an extensive subplot about a widow who finds love, creating conflict with her born-again son, which I have decided was put in there partly as a red herring and partly to express Hill’s obvious dislike of evangelical Christianity, which she seems to conflate with the charismatic speaking-in-tongues end of the denominational pool. Faith is definitely something that Hill’s interested in, but she seems to prefer a more traditionalist Anglican flavor. I always start laughing when narrator Steven Pacey does his Anglican priest voice…

Oh yeah, and somewhere in there there’s that serial killer who shoots at brides. Much as I howl at yet ANOTHER serial killer, I would have liked this murder mystery to have contained a little more murder mystery, and this plot really wasn’t bad and should have been made more of. But there was all that subplot and soap opera, and when the crime resolution came it was kind of pushed into a corner and rushed over. Just another day in the life of an English detective, eh chaps? show less

Extremely well written and deeply drawn characters, whose personal lives are described in vivid, often uncomfortable detail. My only gripe is the use of largely fictional places, making it harder (for me at least) to visualise the places being described.