Generally as good as the usual installment in this series, but a couple of plot lines are a little rough to read, and some of the characters still need a good kick in the pants for acting like children. ( )

A Change of Circumstance is the most recent of Susan Hill's Simon Serrailler novels. It is also her best of the eleven novels which make up the series so far. The books focus on DCI Simon Serrailler, his cases at work, and his family - parents, sister, sister's family. The series is remarkable.

Of the many, many good qualities these books have, one of my favourite things is that cases don't end up solved and put away neatly, and a new case begun at the beginning of the next book. These books sometimes finish in the middle of a case, of a family occurrence, a relationship, and leave you hanging until another is published. Not only is that excellent marketing, it is also a reflection of reality, where things tied up with a pretty ribbon hardly ever happen. (In Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen. That would have driven me crazy had I not written it down.)

In this installment of the books, there are drugs, both traditional street drugs and Chinese herbs, there is family - the ever-angry pater familias, Cat; working hard in her newest medical group; the children, grown up now except for Felix; and a small Yorkshire terrier who is grievously wounded. People, both bad and good, are murdered, and there are threats, an overdose, a suicide, drownings, autopsies and an exhumation. None of it ever feels too much, too crowded, or too mawkish. They are horrible occurrences, but managed so expertly by Hill that these books could never be called thrillers. They're not thrilling. Upsetting, yes, but scandalous never.

Why do I like this book best of her series? I think the writing is tighter. The family is all together, something that hasn't happened since the children were much smaller, and there's a maturity to Simon that hasn't been there before. He sees himself for the first time, the mess he's made, the people he's hurt, his relationship with his sister and her family, which includes a brother-in=law who is also his boss, and whom he doesn't quite like (neither do I. Kieron is soft).

I'm concerned that this might be the last Simon Serrailler book. Hill hasn't killed off her detective, never fear. She has changed him quite a lot, however, and I don't know what that will do to the momentum of the books. Hopefully there will be more. I haven't loved a detective series with this sort of passion for decades, when I first fell in love with Peter Wimsey. I was reading Dorothy Sayers when I was a teenager, so it really has been decades. I do think I am going to have to do a re-read of the series.

I do recommend this series with warmth and heartiness. The Queen has made these books quite well known in her online reading group and there's part of me that wishes that the books weren't quite so popular - I'd rather like to keep them to myself, as if I were eating forbidden sweeties in the night. ( )

The third and last in this series that I acquired recently, this is a little better. It is book 11, and ten years have passed since the opening volume. The deceased Freya is name checked yet again as Simon's sister, Dr Cat, wonders if Simon would have settled down with her had she lived, but concludes that he probably would soon have fallen out of love with her. He apparently has busted up with yet another woman, Rachel, though she was the first to share his flat for a brief period. However, he bumps into her and invites her out for coffee and is soon texting her to invite her to spend a long weekend with him, which Cat takes as yet another instance of his inability to relate to other people's feelings.

In common with previous volumes, a lot of ths is soap opera - among other inconsequential ramblings, the relationship of Cat's son Sam with his girlfriend. Some of the backstory dropped into this seems barely credible: the father of Simon and Cat, widowed in book 3, has apparently married again in the meantime but turned violent against his second wife and sexually assaulted another woman so is now on his own. Cat and her family spent a whole year in Australia, not the six months they originally planned at the end of book 3 and at some point in the intevening years, Cat's husband died of cancer. She is now remarried - her second husband being the Chief Constable and her brother's direct boss!

Another backstory element demonstrates the writer's departure from the reality of police work, something that happens too often in these books. Simon has a prosthetic arm though little is made of this, but it seems he was seriously injured while infiltrating a paedophile ring - as he was apparently a Detective Chief Superintendant by that time, I find that completely incredible. Even at his level in books 1 and 3 which I read previously, a Detective Chief Inspector, he would have been too senior in rank to work undercover, and his appearance on various previous TV press conferences etc would have meant far too much risk of his being recognised. And from a review I read after finishing the book, it seems this was in prison, so surely he would have stood even more chance of being recognised by one of the inmates.

The actual crime element in the present volume is the impact on the local community of county lines: drug dealing networks that exploit children to courier money and drugs. A boy of eleven is drawn in by a man who gives him a lift when he misses the school bus and then waits for him outside school with a present - a rucksack which turns out to contain a 'burner' phone. Through these 'gifts' the boy is pressured into making his first drop-off. Meanwhile, an older girl tries to refuse to carry on doing the same thing for the same dealer, cowed by threats of violence that lead to tragedy.

By the end of the book, Simon accepts that his cosy, convenient flat isn't a permanent home: it is revealed that it is only rented. Given his good salary, he should buy a house, and he considers one out in the countryside but in his usual way, dithers over whether to proceed. However, there are inklings that he is finally ready to commit to a relationship, and by story's end it seems he will get back with Rachel. Even marriage seems to be in the air, so this was a good point on which to bow out of this series. I don't intend to read any more, but at least the last two have gradually got a bit better, earning an extra star over the disastrous book 1, and I can award this one a respectable 3 stars. ( )

I love this series. Hill keeps many threads going and does each one justice. The characters are all well developed the story is as much about their relationships with each other as are the crimes. She does an excellent job of showing how drugs infiltrate and damage rural, idyllic towns, all for profit. Sadly, this is all too true. ( )

On par with the series generally, which is a very good standard.

Folks complain they do not like Simon . . . but Simon's not really there to be *liked.* Those things you don't like about him are debilitating neuroses, really, and are part of a character who is awful and inaccessible to a lot of the people who becomes close with. Only his sister has the patience and fortitude to put up with it, and her patience, fortitude and caring can also become a bit patience-trying. But Hill's agenda isn't making characters we immediately fall in love with, it's making realistically difficult characters, whose extraordinary abilities are set off by extraordinary flaws.

The great thing about this series is that within the framework of the crime novel, Hill is able to bring us realistic characters facing realistic problems, like deep emotional scars, mortality, loneliness and more.

If you are looking for a protagonist you can just immediately and unambiguously love, this isn't your series. If you are looking for a crime novel that always prioritizes the crime bits, this isn't your series. ( )