Dialogues of the Dead - Softcover

Hill, Reginald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006512887 ISBN 13: 9780006512882

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2002

Synopsis

New Dalziel and Pascoe novel from Britain’s finest male crime writer: ‘Reginald Hill stands head and shoulders above any other writer of homebred crime fiction’ Tom Hiney, Observer

A man drowns. Another dies in a motorbike crash. Two accidents ... yet in a pair of so-called Dialogues sent to the Mid-Yorkshire Gazette as entries in a short story competition, someone seems to be taking responsibility for the deaths.

In Mid-Yorkshire CID these claims are greeted with disbelief. But when the story is leaked to television and a third indisputable murder takes place, Dalziel and Pascoe find themselves playing a game no one knows the rules of against an opponent known only as the Wordman.

About this title

Review:

One of the things that the classic British crime novel does is set us puzzles; in Reginald Hill's new Dalziel and Pascoe novel Dialogues of the Dead they introduce us to a killer who does almost nothing else. A series of seemingly random killings are connected by the accounts of them--accounts awash in puns, literary allusions and deliberate obscurities--which keep turning up at the Mid-Yorkshire County Library. At first, keen young recruit Hat Bowler only takes the letters seriously as a way of chatting up the beautiful Rye Pomona--but it becomes progressively clearer to him and his superiors that whoever is writing them simply knows too much not to be the killer... Hill is at the height of his powers here--comic grotesques like Dalziel, with his habit of deliberately seeming more thuggish and obtuse than anyone could possibly quite be, compete for space with satiric observation of Jax, the bright young TV link who will do anything for her story, and the penny-pinching left-wing councillor who ends up with a chisel in his brain. Anyone who likes Hill's always excellent work will be impressed by this--and anyone who likes word-play and puzzles will be fascinated by it. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

·‘Red herrings and clues abound ... the dialogue is laugh-out-loud and offensive, one of the many things readers have come to love in Hill’s books’ Sunday Times

·‘As entertainingly funny as it is exciting’ Spectator

·‘Hugely enjoyable’ Observer

·‘Reginald Hill is writing very much at the top of his form ... the cleverest crime novel of the year, and also one of the most enjoyable’ Evening Standard

·‘Another winner from a genuine master of British crime fiction’ Time Out

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0006512887
• ISBN 13: 9780006512882
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320