Dalziel & Pascoe 19: Dialogues Of The Dead by Reginald Hill, ISBN 9780006512882

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A Dalziel and Pascoe Novel.

In the Beginning was the Word . . .

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' apparently as entries in a short story competition, someone seems to be claiming responsibility for the deaths.

In Mid-Yorkshire CID the word is heard but not believed. Even Hat Bowler, the young DC who first gets a hold of the story, only pretends to take it seriously in order to get closer to the girl of his dreams, librarian Raina Pomona. 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.

Gradually the hunt focuses on three main suspects. Still Dialogue follows Dialogue and funeral follows funeral, till finally Hat Bowler, who is at odds with his girlfriend over the direction of the police investigation, begins to fear that she may be about to find out he's right in the worst possible way.

Reginald Hill's books are always full of word-games, but they have rarely been so important as they are here. There are enough clues to weave a tapestry, but in this game just who is playing against whom? Is it the Wordman versus the police? Or the killer against his victims? Or is the real game between you, dear reader, and Reginald Hill himself, at his most intriguing, most enticing, most elusive best?

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About the Author: Reginald Hill

Reginald Charles Hill (born 3 April 1936, West Hartlepool, County Durham) is a contemporary English crime writer, and the winner in 1995 of the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement.

Hill's novels employ various structural devices, such as presenting parts of the story in non-chronological order, or alternating with sections from a novel supposedly written by Peter's wife, Ellie Pascoe (n e Soper). Clues may also be provided in such a way that readers sail past them, only realising at the end how their own assumptions have been exposed. He also frequently selects one writer or one oeuvre to use as a central organizing element of a given novel, such as one novel being a pastiche of Jane Austen's works, or another featuring elements of classical Greek myth. In a different kind of tease, the novella One Small Step (dedicated to "you, dear readers, without whom the writing would be in vain, and to you, still dearer purchasers, without whom the eating would be infrequent",) is set in the future, and deals with the EuroFed Police Commissioner Pascoe and retired Dalziel investigating the first murder on the moon. In another departure from the norm, the duo do not always "get their man", with at least one novel ending with the villain getting away and another strongly implying that while Dalziel and Pascoe are unable to convict anyone, a series of unrelated accidents actually included at least one unprovable instance of murder.

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