Death's Jest-Book (Dalziel & Pascoe Novel) [Hardcover]

‘He is probably the best living male crime writer in the English-speaking world’ Andrew Taylor, Independent

‘One of Britain’s most consistently excellent crime novelists’ Marcel Berlins, The Times

‘Few writers in the genre today have Hill’s gifts: formidable intelligence, quick humour, compassion and a prose style that blends elegance and grace’ Donna Leon, Sunday Times

‘The finest male English contemporary crime writer’ Val McDermid, Manchester Evening News

‘An increasingly lyrical and always humorous writer, he is first and foremost an instinctive and complete novelist who is blessed with a spontaneous storytelling gift’ Frances Fyfield, Mail on Sunday

Praise for Arms and the Women:
‘Luminously written, thrilling in the best old-fashioned sense of the word, unexpectedly erudite, and beautifully structured’ Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail

‘Brilliantly written, highly amusing and extraordinarily readable’ T J Binyon, Evening Standard

Latest in ever-popular and consistently acclaimed Dalziel & Pascoe series: ‘Reginald Hill stands head and shoulders above any other writer of homebred crime fiction’ Tom Hiney, Observer

In T.L. Beddoes’ play Death’s Jest-Book, the dead won’t lie still in the grave and the living often wish they could. And Reginald Hill’s novel is much the same – except perhaps for a few more jests.

The dead-pan joker, Franny Roote, is working on his dead friend’s unfinished biography of Beddoes, and with unfinished business between himself and DCI Pascoe to deal with as well. Three times Pascoe has been wrong about Roote. This time he’s determined to leave no grave-stone unturned as he tries to prove that the ex-con and aspiring academic is mad, bad and dangerous to know. Meanwhile, Edgar Wield, Quixote-like, rides to the rescue of a child in danger, and finds he’s got a rent-boy under his wing. In return, the boy tips him off about the heist of a pricesless treasure, and soon Wieldy’s torn between protecting the boy and doing his duty.

His superiors might have worries, but DC Hat Bowler’s looking forward to a blissful New Year with the girl of his dreams. The trouble is that that girl is Rye Pomona and her dreams are filled with a horror too terrible to tell – even though Charley Penn throws all his energies into trying to do exactly that.

And over all this activity broods the huge form of Mid-Yorkshire CID’s First Mover, DS Andy Dalziel. As trouble builds, the Fat Man discovers (as many deities before him) that omniscience can be more trouble than its worth, and that sometimes all omnipotence means is that you can have any colour you like, as long as it’s black.

In T.L. Beddoes’ play Death’s Jest-Book, the dead won’t lie still in the grave and the living often wish they could. And Reginald Hill’s novel is much the same – except perhaps for a few more jests.

The dead-pan joker, Franny Roote, is working on his dead friend’s unfinished biography of Beddoes, and with unfinished business between himself and DCI Pascoe to deal with as well. Three times Pascoe has been wrong about Roote. This time he’s determined to leave no grave-stone unturned as he tries to prove that the ex-con and aspiring academic is mad, bad and dangerous to know. Meanwhile, Edgar Wield, Quixote-like, rides to the rescue of a child in danger, and finds he’s got a rent-boy under his wing. In return, the boy tips him off about the heist of a pricesless treasure, and soon Wieldy’s torn between protecting the boy and doing his duty.

His superiors might have worries, but DC Hat Bowler’s looking forward to a blissful New Year with the girl of his dreams. The trouble is that that girl is Rye Pomona and her dreams are filled with a horror too terrible to tell – even though Charley Penn throws all his energies into trying to do exactly that.

And over all this activity broods the huge form of Mid-Yorkshire CID’s First Mover, DS Andy Dalziel. As trouble builds, the Fat Man discovers (as many deities before him) that omniscience can be more trouble than its worth, and that sometimes all omnipotence means is that you can have any colour you like, as long as it’s black.

ACCLAIM FOR REGINALD HILL

”He is probably th ebest living male crime writer in the English-speaking world.”
ANDREW TAYLOR 'Independent'

“Few writers in the genre today have Hill’s gifts: formidable intelligence, quick humour, compassion and a prose style that blends elegance and grace.”
DONNA LEON, 'Sunday Times'

Reginald Hill is a native of Cumbria and a former resident of Yorkshire, the setting for his outstanding crime novels featuring Dalziel and Pascoe, ‘the best detective duo on the scene bar none’ (Daily Telegraph). His writing career began with the publication of A Clubbable Woman (1970), which introduced Chief Superintendent Andy Dalziel and DS Peter Pascoe. With their subsequent appearances Reginald Hill has won numerous awards, including the Crime Writers’ Assocation Cartier Diamond Dagger for his lifetime contribution to the genre.