The Pure in Heart -- Susan Hill

I broke a pretty big reading rule (never read an author back-to-back) when I dove into Susan Hill's second Simon Serailler mystery, The Pure in Heart, but I couldn't help it. It was the literary equivalent of handing a chocolate fiend a bag of Hershey's Kisses, and saying, "Just eat one at a time."

This one opens with Simon away on holiday in Venice, where he spends his time on his second passion, drawing. He is called to return home by his somewhat estranged father on pressing family business -- his sister, Martha, long institutionalized in a near vegetative state, has taken a turn for the worst, and Simon rushes back to see her. The fierce and tender affection he has for her reveals cracks in his veneer that just made my heart ache.

The timing of his return coincides with the disappearance of a little boy, snatched from the road side where his mother left him to wait for his ride to school. As Simon and his team struggle to find any clues whatsoever to the boy's whereabouts we become witness to the anguish of his family, who themselves have naturally fallen under suspicion.

Once again, as in The Various Haunts of Men, Hill throws off all the conventions of the genre to stunning and jaw-dropping effect; and once again, multiple story lines all read like exquisitely written novellas in the midst of the mystery.

I just cannot recommend Susan Hill's Serailler mysteries enough -- and I'm very eager to get my hands on the third and fourth in the series, both of which have been issued in England already. Darn those Brits!