You couldn't ask for a better title for this best-of collection. It came out in mid-2009, soon after Random Hold leader David Ferguson passed away. The two events are unrelated, though, as the CD was meant to pave the way for a comeback and a brand new Random Hold album (already completed when Ferguson died). However, the problem with View with Suspicion is two-fold. First, existing on and off since 1977, the band has actually released little material -- three albums plus a few singles, all already available (plus archive material) over three CDs released or reissued by Voiceprint in recent years. Second, nothing the band recorded post-1980 ever came close to matching the quality, focus, and intensity of their first LP The View from Here. Was it the chemistry found within the songwriting team of Ferguson and David Rhodes? Bassist Bill MacCormick's towering presence and riveting lines? Peter Hammill's no-nonsense production? In any case, once MacCormick left and Peter Gabriel recruited Rhodes to be his guitarist, Ferguson was left with little to work with. And the bleak, ominous feel of The View from Here was gone, replaced by a much more commercial approach to pop music (whereas the first album could be called cold-wave rock with progressive rock leanings). What you get on View with Suspicion is a couple of pre-View tracks (from the archive collection Over View, including an early version of the key song "The Ballad"), three tracks from The View from Here (including their frightening "Avalanche" -- one of the better early-'80s songs recorded by any artist -- and a track from the live set appended to the original LP on the Voiceprint reissue), four tracks from the two albums released later (and collected on Differing Views), plus three new songs, one of which is a preview of the new album A View from the Summit. The band having gone through ten lineups and a couple of major changes in direction, a career-encompassing collection like this is bound to feel disjointed, and it does. However, one Ariane's thread runs through it all: Ferguson's dark, slightly askew songwriting, which you can still hear underpinning a lighter song like "As Tears Go By." Still, start with The View from Here (this collection lacks "Montgomery Clift," "Silver Spoons," and a bunch of other killer songs), then proceed to the other CDs if you feel like it, but you don't really need this suspicious best-of.