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'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
'Reginald Hill's novels are really dances to the music of time, his heroes and villains interconnecting, their stories intertwining'
Ian Rankin
'One of Britain's most consistently excellent crime novelists' The Times
'These novels last, like a grand malt whisky – rounded, rich, intoxicating… Here is an author at his formidable best'
Frances Fyfield, Mail on Sunday
'So far out in front that he need not bother looking over his shoulder' Sunday Telegraph
'He is probably the best living male crime writer in the English-speaking world' Andrew Taylor, Independent
'Reginald Hill stands head and shoulders above any other writer of homebred crime fiction' Tom Hiney, Observer
Product Description
Another excellent Dalziel and Pascoe story from the master of the British crime novel
Three old men die on a stormy November night: one by deliberate violence, one in a road accident and one by an unknown cause.
Inspector Pascoe is called in to investigate the first death, but when the dying words of the accident victim suggest that a drunken Superintendent Dalziel had been behind the wheel, the integrity of the entire Mid-Yorkshire constabulary is called into question.
Helped by the bright but wayward DC Seymour, hindered by ‘Maggie’s Moron’, the half-witted Constable Hector, Peter Pascoe enters the twilight and vulnerable world of the senior citizen – to discover that the beckoning darkness at the end of the tunnel holds few comforts.
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But hey - it's fun, and you need something to lighten a story which revolves around the deaths of three pretty ordinary old men. And this Reginald Hill does, without trivialising the sadness of the victims and their relatives. The characters of two minor stalwarts of Mid-Yorkshire C.I.D. are also developed (the awkward Constable Hector and the up-and-coming D.C. Seymour - who tries to balance success in love with the contingencies of the service).
What gives this novel an extra tension is the suggestion that the Fat Man himself might have been involved in one of the deaths, and Pascoe's loyalty (and ours!) is stretched to the limit. Hang in, there!
The book opens with the deaths of three old men on a November night: as Detective Inspector Pascoe remarks, decidedly "not a good night for the old". One was murdered in his bathtub, his daughter arriving just in time to hear him gasp "Charley" and die; one died of exposure on playing fields, the discoverer of the body hearing him cry "Polly"; and the third murmured "Paradise! Driver... fat bastard...pissed!"-understandably so, for Superintendent Dalziel was in the car which hit him. The dying messages serve as clues as enigmatic as death itself, reinforced by the choice of dying words as chapter headings (great fun for those quotation spotters and spouters out there!). Police work uncovers connections between the supposedly separate cases-and police corruption hovering in the air, with Dalziel going on a shooting spree (of pheasants, that is)-"grand".
Reginald Hill shows himself as a keen observer of humanity, fascinated by the human race-but not becoming bogged down in Ruth Rendell's social conscience or P.D. James' bleak pessimism, but instead remembering that the writer's first duty is to the reader, to entertain. Take, for example, Ellie Pascoe's father's senility as an example of how to handle family background problems without intrusion: it is secondary to the plot, but is there as a play on the book's theme of ageing, and also serves to provide a vital clue. Characterisation is superlative, the reader really feeling sympathy for the characters, or despising those who view the old as a burden. Hill achieves this through a remarkable mixture of humour and genuine emotion, contrasting-but never clashing-humour with grief in succeeding paragraphs. Old age is really brought home to the reader by the senile dementia of Mrs. Escott, a genuinely pathetic and well-drawn character.
The whole-detective story, novel elements-culminates in a particularly neat and moving ending in which all the loose ends tied up, with both good clues and affecting murderers. This book shows Reginald Hill at the height of his powers-without any doubt the best of the modern writers of detective stories who are still writing.
Reginald Hill's Dalziel/Pascoe stories are unique, in that they vary from very light hearted (Pictures of Perfection) to grim and haunting, and even to the paranormal! This story is on the lighter side. The unusual twist is that Pascoe himself is forced to wonder whether, by driving under the influence, Dalziel has corrupted the investigation. The story ties together the threads of 3 different deaths on the same night. A newer character, Detective-Constable Seymour, assists Pascoe and Sgt Wield in the investigation. The completely clueless and luckless Constable Hector manages to hinder most of the help Seymour is providing. The story has some very funny moments despite the tragedy of the deaths of the three elderly victims. As always it is great when Mrs. Ellie Pascoe is a part of the story. And she is "present" in this one, although she's physically away, taking care of her own elderly father. The mystery is satisfying and the reader's natural suspicion of Dalziel's motives, and maybe even his integrity, actually enhances the plot. Well done.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
(For a sampling of the haunting, deeper side of Reginald Hill's Dalziel/Pascoe stories try "On Beulah Height: or "The Wood Beyond".)
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