Book description
The seventh Simon Serrailler crime novel.
How do you find a killer who doesn't exist?
Duchess of Cornwall Close: sheltered accommodation, a mix of
bungalows and flats, newly built and not quite finished. Despite the
bitterly cold weather, elderly residents are moving in. They don't
notice the figure in the shadows. Someone who doesn't mind the cold.
Then, one snowy night, an old lady is murdered - dragged from her
bed and strangled with a length of flex.
DCS Simon Serrailler and his team are aware of bizarre circumstances
surrounding her death - but they keep some of these details secret,
while they desperately search for a match. All they know is that the
killer will strike again, and will once more leave the same tell-tale signature.
The break comes when Simon's former sergeant, the ever cheerful
Nathan Coates, tracks down a name: Alan Keyes. But Alan Keyes has no
birth certificate, no address, no job,no family, no passport, no
dental records. Nothing. Alan Keyes does not exist.
A Question of Identity introduces a new and chilling element
into the Simon Serrailler series: it takes the reader inside the mind
of a deranged killer. This is Susan Hill's most thrillingly imagined
crime novel to date.
Not all great novelists can write crime fiction but when one like
Susan Hill does the result is stunning -- Ruth Rendell Eagerly awaited
by all aficionados of crime fiction -- P. D. James This is a crime
series that specialises in side-stepping conventions, always to
exhilarating effect. The books succeed in harnessing all the genre's
addictive power while maintaining a complexity and fascination all their
own. Independent
Susan Hill's novels and short stories have won the
Whitbread, Somerset Maugham and John Llewellyn Rhys awards, and the
Yorkshire Post Book of the Year, and been shortlisted for the Man
Booker Prize. She is the author of 56 books. The play adapted from her
famous ghost story, The Woman in Black, has been running in the
West End since 1989; it is also a major feature film. Her crime novels
featuring DCS Simon Serrailler are currently being adapted for TV.
Susan Hill was born in Scarborough and educated at King's College
London. She is married to the Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells, and
they have two daughters. Susan Hill was appointed a CBE in the Queen's
Diamond Jubilee Honours.
www. susan-hill. com
