Sarah Hilary - Someone Else's Skin

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Very good crime writing

I enjoyed Someone Else’s Skin. I have read a couple of the later ones in this series and was glad of the chance to read the first.

This is a police procedural featuring DI Marnie Rome and DS Noah Jake which deals with some pretty dark issues of domestic abuse. It does it with realism and generally unsensationally, although there is a longish episode of effectively torture which teetered on the border, I thought. It was redeemed by avoiding many of the clichés and stereotypes of the genre, though, and the story is by and large convincing – and the psychology is a lot more plausible than it often is in crime novels.

The great thing about the book is that Sarah Hilary can really write. Her prose is readable and unflashy, but is very evocative. This gives a flavour: “Her features clustered sulkily at the centre of her face, corralled by pallid, marbled flesh.” The book is full of these little gems of description and it’s a pleasure to read.

I do think that Hilary overdoes her characters’ personal lives. The book opens with the murder of Marnie Rome’s parents, for example, something which rather dominates the books and which intrudes a bit more than I’d like. I also thought that two tense climaxes was rather implausibly excessive. However, overall it’s a very good, gripping read which deals well with tough issues.

(My thanks to Headline for an ARC via NetGalley.)