The Lighthouse, Alison Moore

Read on the Kindle, from the Booker Prize Long List 2012.  Bought at the same time as Swimming Home, but must have got lost on the Kindle as only now getting round to reading it.

We first meet the protagonist Futh on the ferry that is taking him to Germany for a walking holiday.  It's a repeat of an aborted holiday he took with his father, just after his mother has left them to return to her native America.

Futh has plans to walk a circular route along the Rhine; he has arranged for his suitcase to follow him each evening to his hotel. Whilst walking he ruminates on his parents, and his own failed marriages.  Meanwhile, at Hellhaus, the first hotel on his itinerary, another drama is playing out between the owners Ester and Bernard.

I enjoyed this book, with it's atmosphere of lurking menace and fatalistic ending.

The Risk of Darkness, Susan Hill

Read on the Kindle after reading The Various Haunts of Men and The Pure in Heart.

The third book in the Simon Serailler series.

You really need to have read the first two by the time you get to this book as the plot follows directly on from The Pure in Heart, and tries to tie up the loose ends left from that book.

The sub-plots of this book, especially the parts of the book dealing with Simon's sister Cat, and her exhausted GP husband Chris, are mere distractions to the main point of closing out the child abductor story line from the previous book.

It's the writing that saves this series.

The Pure in Heart, Susan Hill

Read on the Kindle, purchased as a bundle with The Various Haunts of Men.

This is the second of the Simon Serailler novels, and he is a properly established character now, along with his family, his parents, sister and brother-in-law and their children.

In this book, Simon is on the trail of a child abductor. Not to give the plot away, the murderer defies all the expectations of the several police forces out to catch them.

It's a great story, with well drawn characters, but ultimately unsatisfying as it's clearly the middle book of what's meant to be a trilogy, and many loose ends are left.

The Various Haunts of Men, Susan Hill

Read on the Kindle - bought as a bundle with The Pure in Heart.

I read The Vows of Silence a while back, and thought I would go back to the start of the story.

This is the first of the Simon Serailler novels and distinguishes itself by not properly introducing the detective until about half way through the book. Instead, the protagonist is Freya Graffham a young female detective recently arrived from London.

This book sets the scene with Simon's family, who will play a big part in all the subsequent books - another trick which sets this series apart from other detective novels.

An interesting tale of a serial killer in rural England, didn't put me off reading more.