Dialogues of the Dead Book

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 Read More