Last night I stayed up late, reading, so that I could satisfy my curiosity about the end of a book by Susan Hill entitled “The Pure in Heart”. It is beautifully written and it contains a mystery. Her characters are well thought out and have a great deal of depth.

It is set in England. There is a detective, Simon, and his family, all doctors except for a profoundly retarded sister, Martha, who, at 26. lives in a nursing home with total care. Simon visits her often and is devoted to her although her affect is little more than that of a 10-month-old infant. His father barely tolerates him because he chose to be a cop and not a doctor.

Simon’s mother gives Martha a lethal injection to spare her a life not worth living and tells only her husband. At the end of the book her husband forgives her and “her heart is light”.

Simon adored his retarded sister, the “pure in heart” of the book’s title. He never learns his mother offed her.

There is Diana, a lovely woman the detective dated for a while then drops her because he was drawn to a colleague who was murdered. This relationship had never matured and had no chance to because she died but he convinces himself she could have been his one true love. His beloved other sister, Cat, also a doctor, tells him he is avoiding intimacy. Oh, she doesn’t use that term. But obviously the only safe true love is a dead one. Diana’s obsession is so vividly drawn that I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop as in her showing up with a gun.

A 9-year-old boy, David, is kidnapped and the investigation into his disappearance runs through the entire book. The boy’s mother becomes a zombie, her husband, one of the family's doctor colleagues, commits suicide because he can’t cope, her daughter, Lucy, runs away because, although she never minded David being the favorite, now she does not exist at all. She is found in a shed, cuddling with a neighbor’s dog. She asks her mother for a dog and the mother, not enlightened by her desperate bid for attention, continues her focus on the missing son and says they can’t have one because David is allergic to dogs.

The boy is never found except there is an oblique reference to his dying slowly in a cellar, his bones, perhaps never to be found. We never find out why he was taken, so one supposes it was a pedophile. There is never a ransom demand. At the very end, almost on the last page, a second child goes missing and Simon cancels his vacation to Venice where he goes to wander and sketch, being an amateur artist. Instead he heads back to work.

Diana is last seen hurrying to visit Simon’s mother (whom she has never met) to get closer to him somehow, so her story-line is not resolved.

I hoped to learn about the successful recovery of a living 9-year-old but instead have to guess why he was killed, if he was, or did he just die of neglect in a cellar. I hoped Simon would connect with someone, anyone, but he is content with celibacy for now since he doesn’t want anything to do with Diana who, incidentally, never offended him during their affair. I could have done without the introduction of yet another missing child. The writing kept me going BUT the title should be “Unfulfilled” or maybe “High and Dry” or maybe even "Gotcha".

I appreciate that as a British author, her stuff is still understandable, unlike Ian Rankin, whose narrative is so filled with British slang, one needs a translator. If Hill’s detective is going to be part of a series, she should throw the reader a bone next time. I am not inclined to get interested only to go kathunk at the end.

xx, Teal