I didn't even have time to mark this as currently reading because I read it so fast! Which made me realise how some readers on GR can race through so many books per week, if they stick with a steady diet of genre fiction which has only the plainest vocabulary and deals in characters, scenes and plots we have encountered already a bajillion times in tv shows, movies and other genre fiction books. So even though this was about busting open a hardcore paedophile ring it was easy reading. One's eyes simply melted through each page, one did. 
 AND THEN AND THEN AND THEN 
 Plot : it hardly exists in proper grown-up literature. The more plotty a book is, the further it is from real literature. E.g. anything by Thomas Bernhard, Underworld, Ulysses, The Sound and the Fury, Proust, Sentimental Education - all stone-cold 500 carat literature; a little more plotty - Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Jonathan Franzen, still literature but only 50 carat; then totally plotty genre fiction : not literature. 
 (Then you get the 15-tentacled giant squid-beasts that are TV soap operas, the plottiest things ever, and the trashiest.) 
 So you see how this thing goes. 
 For example "Can I Come Over Tonight" by The Velours (1962) 
 Even though the story could only go one or two ways at each twist, and even though each of these ways would have been unrelated to any form of originality, still, I kept glomming though this book. Glom, glom, read, read. 
 But I do understand the pleasures of genre, being a fan of doo-wop music, the American pop harmony groups which flourished between 1956 and 1962. They only ever used four chords, their lyrics and tunes were interchangeable, at 1 minute 15 seconds there was always a saxophone break (never guitar), and there were only ever four varieties of doo wop : fast, slow, black and Italian American. I imagine fans of detective thrillers have the same kind of relationship, and love the similarity and the microtonal differences - a great falsetto, a pyrotechnic hero-gets-beaten-up scene. Same kind of thing going on. 
 NOTE ON ENGLISH ALCOHOLISM 
 Every other scene in this entire novel, apart from when they're in prison, features alcohol. Susan Hill, you may not want to acknowledge this, but I think your book has a problem. 
 Let us pick a random few pages: 
 The drinks cupboard was well stocked and the supper straightforward... they cleared everything , plus a bottle and a half of burgundy p274 
 The drink had gone to his head faster than usual p276 
 Will held up a bottle of beer, smoking with cold from the fridge... "Gin and tonic? Vodka?" p296 
 Morson got up and refilled his own glass, handed Will a second bottle of beer without asking p297 
 "Make yourself comfortable, Johnno. What can I get you to drink?" The vodka bottle came up from the fridge. P300 
 A soft knock on his door. "Brought you a beer." P308 
 "Want me to slip down and get you a Scotch to chase the beer?" p310 
 "I'm in need of a drink. Can I get you a glass of wine or a beer?" p 323 
 And on and on and on. 
 Don't bother to get up. I can see myself out. Oops! Never mind, I'm okay.