I love this series and always pop straight out to buy the new instalment. In this novel the crime being investigated is a burglary. A couple enjoying a quiet evening in their remote cottage are disturbed by a couple who are stranded after their car has broken down. While one of the couple shows the man to the phone, his husband strikes up a conversation with the girl. They have a cup of tea and talk about the artwork hanging around the house. The next week they receive a letter of thanks plus two tickets to see the ENO perform. Unfortunately, on their return they find their cottage burgled and their precious art collection gone.
The detective solving this crime is Simon Serrailler and he makes a big decision early on by ordering a news blackout. His reasoning is that if all goes quiet the perpetrators will think they’ve got away with it and plan another burgla
ry. His plan backfires when local businessman and donor to the police, Declan McDermid and his wife return early from a charity reception to find their house being broken into. The target is their art collection, including priceless Warhol prints, but come the morning local doctor Cat Deerborn pops in for a coffee to find the couple tied up, beaten and bleeding. When his wife dies of her injuries will Serrailler’s decision be called into question?
Simon Serrailler is intriguing as a central character. He doesn’t give anything away. I’m never sure what his thinking or motivation is. In the past I have shared his love interest’s frustrations as he doesn’t seem to need them at all. Even after this many novels I don’t fully know what to make of him. I suppose he fulfils the ‘flawed detective’ - wedded to work, unable to maintain a relationship, handsome and thoroughly inaccessible. Here Serrailler is given more emotional depth. He is now a wounded hero, struggling to accept a life-changing injury he received in the line of duty. The calm, cool surface he has always tried to maintain has always covered glimpses of anger and in this novel we finally see that surface crack. It seems he is only able to find peace of mind when drawing and as he starts to suffer chest pains, breathlessness and feelings of doom it becomes clear that a lifetime of bottling up his emotions will have consequences. I welcomed this aspect to his character, because it made him more accessible and human.
In the past I have always been drawn to his sister Cat and her family. They are the warm centre of these novels and her struggle to be the woman of the family, serve her patients and be Mum to her own kids. I was especially touched by her struggle nursing her terminally ill husband until his death earlier in the series. Here we find Cat struggling to reconcile various different parts of her life. She is one of the ‘middle’ people in society; coping with parents in declining health while still having children at home. Cat and Simon’s father is as judgemental as always, and continues to treat women as objects. Cat is torn between daughterly duty and the responsibility she feels for his wrongdoing. At work she is torn between principle and having a life outside her patients. Now working for a private GP company she is called upon by NHS colleagues and her own conscience to justify working in the private sector. Finally she is worried about Simon, but torn by loyalty to her new husband who happens to be the Chief Constable and Simon’s boss.
It is one of Cat’s patients that caught my imagination and is one of the most intriguing parts of the novel. Carrie Pegwell is pregnant when Cat is first called out to see her part way into the novel, but Cat can’t detect any joy or expectancy. In fact she finds Carrie listless and depressed, while her husband is largely detached from the pregnancy and his wife. Carrie has become obsessed with the idea something is wrong with her baby yet hasn’t been for any of the recommended tests or scan. Cat is the first doctor she has seen, but even with reassurances Carrie will not accept her baby is healthy and her pregnancy normal. Cat suspects a fixation borne of anxiety, but can’t discount the fact that mums often have a sixth sense when it comes to their children. I found myself reading ‘just one more chapter’ to see what happened when the baby was born and where this strange couple fit into the larger story.
I found the novel gripping enough to keep turning the pages and read it in a day (and one very late night). I enjoyed the progression of the characters lives, especially changes within the family dynamic as Cat’s children grow into adults. Towards the ending I did have that experience, peculiar to kindle books, where I raced on and on then hit the ending suddenly as if I’d come round a corner and hit a tree. It felt very abrupt and as if things were unfinished; Some characters were in limbo and the crimes went unpunished. I had to go back and read the last few chapters again to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. This could be a cliffhanger for the next novel, but could also be a comment on a life where not every ending is neatly tied up in a bow.
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