Compulsive Reading?

A few weeks ago, I was lent a book *The Various Haunts Of Men* by Susan Hill, an unknown to me, authoress.

It was, I suppose, a detective story and I don't normally go for this type of book. However, this was a detective thriller with a difference. By the time I'd finished it, I was completely hooked and found out that this was the first of a series of the detective, Simon Serailler, books. I had to have the next one and to read them all in sequence because each book had reference to the last and many of the characters were the same.

So what was it that made this book different from the usual detective stories that I'd avoided up until now?

I would say that I was urged to read on in a tantalising way. There were several main characters involved and different chapters told the perspective of one or other of these people who all had a communal part in the story. So I was whizzing through to find out what happened to each of these characters and the book was teasing me on all the way through.

There was something about Simon Serailler that was very human as he was a family man and was very involved with his sisters, niece and nephew and his mother but was a bit estranged from his brother and father. By reading these books, his family became very much a part of the stories and I found I could identify with a lot of the family storyline.

Apart from the huge amount of crime in the small, fictional cathedral town of Lafferton, (and there has to be an exciting story line to keep the reader happy) much of the portrayal of Simon's life style was credible and the stories, though some of them were a bit gruesome, came under the thriller title and made compelling reading, I thought.

Anyway, I'm well onto my fifth book in the series and still feel I want to read more.

Anyone else hooked?