Gwen Moffat lives in Cumbria. Her novels are set in remote communities ranging from the Hebrides to the American West. The crimes fit their environment, swelling that dreadful record of sin in the smiling countryside cited by Sherlock Holmes.
With short succinct chapters this story is told from different points of view; the result is informative and seamless with never a whiff of contrivance.
It doesn’t start sensationally but neither is it innocuous. The Pegwells are at loggerheads, Carrie convinced that the baby she is carrying is already deformed in the womb, while Colin, a husband who epitomises callousness, has no time for anything other than his computer and the money markets.
In welcome contrast to the Pegwells are the gay couple Ade and Tim: happy cultured professionals who are approached at home one night by young stranded motorists. Tim over-rides his partner’s misgivings and sure enough, his genial hospitality is shortly rewarded by the youngsters’ gift of two tickets to the opera. The couple are charmed, and on the specified night depart blithely to enjoy Britten’s Dream while behind them their house is efficiently stripped of all its treasures.
The burglary introduces the police, notably Hill’s series character, Simon Serrailler, a senior cop recovering from a violent incident in which he lost an arm. Still suffering from stress he makes a lethal error of judgement that puts his career at risk. At the same time his sister, Cat, a compassionate GP, misreads the signs and symptoms presented by pregnant Carrie Pegwell and makes her own disastrous mistake: both tragic examples of behaviour demonstrating the sad irony of the title.
The characters in this story are neatly delineated; although criminals get short shrift, victims, cops, family members may receive full and detailed background while others appear shortly, participate and leave, some unregretted but all alive. Take Declan McDermid, the local self-made tycoon, flaunting his wealth yet touchingly modest in public. It’s at a party to celebrate his gift of new vans to the police that his jolly artless wife, Cindy, takes a shine to Doctor Cat and lets her hair down. After only a few choice lines of dialogue and text the reader is engaged and happily anticipates more scenes with Cindy. But Hill is an expert in shock and horror is waiting in the wings.
It’s after that party, in a faint echo of Tim and Ade’s burglary that the McDermids return to their opulent mansion and to extraordinary violence.
The action accelerates. Murder follows murder. More people appear, related through kinship or crime: Cat’s naughty old dad, the staunch Polish waitress and her vulnerable friend, vicious thieves, cops and consorts, the cat Mephisto…. The Benefit of Hindsight evolves organically by way of a brilliant fusion of parts: plot, setting, characters, dialogue, and all couched in an unremarkable style that flows like water.
I read it at a sitting. Not just a good book but an experience.
