As I closed the book after reading the final pages Darren glanced over and asked if I’d figured out whodunnit. I had to think for a moment but my answer was that it wasn’t really that sort of mystery. There was no cast of suspects to corral into a room together for a big denouement. On a bit further thought I couldn’t really come up with a mystery at all. I can’t remember all the details of the earlier episodes in the series but by this point (the tenth book) it’s definitely in family saga territory. One of the family happens to be a policeman and you get to see a lot of his police detective work. That’s just fine by me. I like all the details of the supporting characters that Hill puts in, not just Simon’s family, but the characters who only pop up in one book, perhaps to perpetrate a crime, perhaps to have one perpetrated upon them, perhaps just to add flavouring to the plots, they always seem very real. In some books that kind of character is a distraction from the main characters, the people you really care about, but that’s never the case here.