All the classic elements of the whodunit -- or does it?

SUSAN HILL’S first crime novel is one more reminder of the adage about not judging a book by its cover. The black-and-white hillside-at-night artwork promising an atmosphere of moody discomfort is on the money. But the title, “The Various Haunts of Men,” plucked from George Crabbe’s poem “The Borough,” suggests a tome packed with scenes of cigar smoke-filled executive board rooms or hunting lodges or stodgy clubs or not-so-stodgy stripper bars.

The novel, in fact, is concerned with several women living in a British village, struggling with an assortment of problems, old and new, not the least of which is a seemingly indiscriminate homicidal madman. Lurking on a fog-shrouded, once-jogger-friendly hillside path, he collects victims -- young, old, male, female and even canine.

The other bit of misinformation offered by the cover is that it’s a “Simon Serrailler Mystery.” That may be true of the two sequels that have appeared in England since “Haunts” was first published in 2004, but it’s not the case here.

Although Chief Inspector Serrailler -- young, blond, artistic, impossibly handsome and annoyingly enigmatic -- is the subject of much discussion by the ladies, he appears in person on relatively few pages. Even odder, he is in no way responsible for the exposure or apprehension of the aforementioned madman.

The book’s main deductive force is the beguiling, young Sgt. Freya Graffham. Newly arrived in town, the poised and confident investigative officer charms most of the novel’s leading characters, including Serrailler, with whom she falls immediately and hopelessly in love.

Yes, this is a British policewoman-in-love story mixed with a serial-killer mystery and set in a picturesque countryside cathedral town. There are a number of elements one may expect in such fiction. Freya’s immediate supervisor is aloof and obstructive. Her assistant is a humorous, likable and loyal member of the working class. The narration is interrupted by the murderer telling a tape recorder how clever he is, using slightly awkward phrasing to keep his identity a secret for as long as possible.

The town, Lafferton, “small, but not too small, [with] wide, leafy avenues and some pretty Victorian terraces and, in Cathedral Close, fine Georgian houses,” is a bit more contemporary than Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead, but it’s just as comforting.

If these elements make the book sound suspiciously like other series you’ve read, be warned that they are as deceptive as the book’s title.

Author Hill, whose previous nongenre fiction garnered her Whitbread and Somerset Maugham awards (she was also short-listed for the Booker), presumably did not set out merely to follow in the footsteps of P.D. James or Elizabeth George or Martha Grimes. Instead, she appears to have had a much darker -- one might even say perverse -- goal in mind, a defiance of what may be the crime novel’s most treasured ingredient, an ending that suggests a sense of order.

For most of the book, Hill hews to the familiar, introducing us to an assortment of characters, some of whom will meet their fate on the hillside, one of whom will be administering that fate. We follow the level-headed if smitten Freya as she warms to her new home and workspace, by night making friends, attending dinner parties, singing in the cathedral choir and pining for Serrailler, and by day, zeroing in on the missing victims.

There’s an intriguing secondary theme concerning several ill women who travel to the village of Starly, “the center of New Age interests,” to sample its bizarre healers and psychics. Serrailler’s sister Cat (she and Simon are two of triplets, the missing brother a shoe to be dropped in some future story) is a level-headed doctor who keeps urging him to do something about the harmful quacks.

As the end of the book approaches, readers familiar with the genre may feel safe to assume that Freya will have a woman-in-jeopardy moment and emerge unscathed, probably in Serrailler’s arms; that clues and deduction will lead to the killer’s downfall; and that those odd and colorful healers will possibly play some part in the denouement or at least be addressed. Hill has elected to close her novel quite differently. Fans of crime fiction usually enjoy being surprised. But in this case, maybe not.

Dick Lochte’s latest thriller, “Croaked!,” will be published this month.