"Death in a Shetland Family" by Marsali Taylor

 

These murder mysteries starring sailor and sleuth Cass Lynch are getting better with each novel. 

In fact, the whodunnit element is increasingly taking a back seat to an exploration of life in the Shetlands. In this novel we enter the horse world with an escaped stallion and a horse show. We learn about crofting, Roman Catholicism, and genetics. And, of course, there is the sailing.

There is also a murder. Cass doesn't know the family herself, but she knows those who do. She listens to the gossip, weaving together the testimonies to try to find a story. Red herrings are deftly presented. Ambiguities are exploited. And in the end Cass is imperilled, captured, fleeing, hunted. This is a skilfully written classic cosy crime with a dash of jeopardy.

Gavin, the policeman boyfriend? He is in the Highlands because his mother is ill. Meanwhile Cass has to tend their small-holding, including hens, ponies and sheep. She worries whether she can cope with living off the water.

Real characters with real dilemmas.

And the book is brightened by some fabulous descriptive passages, of which my favourite were:

• "Even though it was a bonny day, blue and warm as summer, the colours had turned. The orange hens-and-chickens along the Tingwall verges had withered to brown lollipop heads, and the royal purple of the heather on the hill behind them had bleached to a creamy white, with blue pincushions of scabious growing through." (Ch 1)
• "Kitten was the colours of spices shaken over a worktop, ginger and nutmeg and cinnamon all mixed together" (Ch 2)
• "I woke to a shepherd’s warning; the glass of the window reflected a red light onto the white shade of the overhead lamp, and the window framed thin cirrus tinged coral-gold which faded as the sun rose. A grey shroud lay over the hills, somewhere between a summer heat haze and an autumn mist. In the garden, a last magenta rose flared among the cloud shape of the daisy bushes." (Ch 4)
• "The sea was fretted over with ripples; the hills were auburn, with hummocks of moss like jade rocks among the heather." (Ch 7)
• "I looked west as I came out of Cribba Sound, past the Atlantic swell rolling in from the sea road leading to where there was nothing in the world but your ship poised on a saucer of shining water under a great arch of sky, and felt my heart ache for it." (Ch 9)
• "It was only five o’clock, but the light was already mellowing to tints of evening, the hills dusted with gold, the moorgrass stems glistening. The yellow buttons of tansy by the gate were translucent above their fresh green leaves." (Ch 9)
• "The sun was behind the hills now, but there were slanting gold shafts of light through the gaps in the clouds, and over the soft green hills, and the sound was filled with whisky-amber water." (Ch 21)

Marsali Taylor must be a talented artist: she can certainly paint irresistible pictures with words. These passages are a literary equivalent of a promotional film for the Shetlands tourist board. If only she hadn't mentioned the midges!

She's also very good with psychology, showing a deep understand of human (and, in the first quote, horse) nature:

• "He’s got himself into that high state where he wants things to be back to normal but doesn’t quite know how to get there, like a toddler refusing to go to bed." (Ch 1)
• "Even Vaila, who knew her own mind and shared it generously, paused to think when Rainbow suggested caution." (Ch 2)
• "He oozed superiority, but if he really felt that far above us all, he wouldn’t need to try so hard." (Ch 3)
• "‘So,’ I said, summing up, ‘a man in possession of a good croft needs a wife with a good income to support him.’" (Ch 16) Okay, she's nicked that one but it's a lovely bit of humour.

This series now transcends the crime genre. Exceptionally entertaining but also a delightful read.

July 2026

Published by Headline Accent in 2026

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

This is the fourteenth novel in a crime fiction series that gets better and better. The books, in order, with alternative names, are:

• Death on a Shetland Longship
• The Trowie Mound Murders (Buried in a Shetland Tomb)
• A Handful of Ash (The Shetland Night Killings)
• The Body in the Bracken (Grave of a Shetland Sailor)
• Ghosts of the Vikings (The Shetland Poisonings)
• Death in Shetland Waters
• Death on a Shetland Isle
• Death from a Shetland Cliff
• The Shetland Sea Murders
• A Shetland Winter Mystery
• Death in a Shetland Lane
• Death at a Shetland Festival
• An imposter in Shetland

"A Deadly Fall" by Jon Neal

Not just a classic cosy murder mystery but a beautifully written exploration of the relational dynamics in a small secluded group. With this, the third of the Stanley Messina whodunnits, Jon Neal has ripened into a fine writer. 

The setting is a stately home on an estate in the Sussex countryside. The owner is a former Hollywood actor. The staff include his personal assistant, the housekeeper, and a gardener. The gatehouse is rented to a tenant, the housekeeper's husband helps with clearing trees. And there was another employee who mysteriously fell to his death from a tower abutting the main building. Did he fall, did he jump or was he pushed? The inquest was equivocal. Now Private Investigator Messina has a week to find a definitive answer.

It's not a police procedural; the nature of the problem rules out forensics. Instead, Messina concentrates on developing a respectful understanding of the psychology of the suspects, and thus to analyse the group dynamics. He often does this by comparing what he observes to events and challenges in his own life, for example: “It was incredible, Stanley thought, the myriad of ways a living could be made. Career paths were intensely individual — reflections of a person’s interests, skills, and experience — and yet so often followed with little appreciation or due respect.” (Ch 8)

This is where the novel takes off. Messina's approach necessitates that the characters (including the protagonist) are complex, three-dimensional and carefully developed. This is where Neal excels. He has crafted more than just a classic mystery. It develops a deep appreciation of the protagonist, a caring and empathetic man with a tortured past of his own, at a crossroads in his professional life. 

But it's not just about the characters. The plot is well-paced, clues and red herrings are perfectly and subtly placed, and there is a tumble of revelations at the end, including a clever final twist. Of course all of the suspects have secrets and these are teased apart with a deftness of touch shared by author and detective. 

The verisimilitude of the setting is established with a wealth of fine detail, lightly presented, for example:

• “The peacock was circling. It looked at him suspiciously before throwing back its head angrily and letting out a cry, dragging its heavy tail in its wake.” (Ch 1)
• “The ornate doorways felt like entrances to mazes, each one beckoning him to see what lurked within.” (Ch 18)

The novel is written is the 3rd person past tense, mostly from the perspective of Messina; although one chapter is a flashback from the PoV of another character.

Selected quotes: 

• “The newly reinvented Alison Fencroft haunted the rooms of the gatehouse like a ghost. …Or maybe, Stanley thought with a shudder, like a prisoner.” (Ch 5)
• “One question bred another, and certainty felt further away than ever. All they could do was keep going, trusting that the path might eventually lead somewhere solid — though Stanley knew well enough that some paths never did…” (Ch 9)
• “‘It’s the real-life bit I’ve always found difficult. The messy day‑to‑day business of real life. Give me a script – with everything plotted out, all loose ends tied up neatly – and then I’m happy.” (Ch 19)
• “The apple cart, thought Stanley. The steady equilibrium. That place in life where everything was stacked just perfectly. A place of legend — and maybe also of myth.” (Ch 22)

As the author says in chapter nine, this fine novel provides "proof that his once uncertain career path had become something sustainable."

July 2026; 170 pages
First published in 2026

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

Other novels by Jon Neal:

• A Twin Room: his debut
• Burnt Out: a mystery novel set in Australia

Stanley Messina novels, in order:

1. The Other Path
2. Death Behind Closed Doors
3. A Deadly Fall

"Fer-de-Lance" by Rex Stout

Rex Stout wrote 33 novels featuring his master-sleuth Nero Wolfe and sidekick-narrator Archie Goodwin and this is the very first. Later Nero Wolfe novels include The Doorbell Rang, listed as 66th in the 100 best crime novels by the Mystery Writers of America, and The Father Hunt which won the 1969 silver dagger award from the British Crime Writers' Association. 

It is a sort of hybrid between the classic English whodunnits of Conan Doyle (in which narrator Dr Watson is the sidekick to mastersleuth Sherlock Holmes) and Agatha Christie (whose first Hercule Poirot mysteries are narrated by sidekick Captain Hastings) and the more hardboiled American thriller-crime novels. There are one or two lines, such as “I don't know what kind of a career she had mapped out, but I could have worn her not to try the stage.” (Ch 8) or “The corner the light doesn't reach is the one the dime rolled to.” (Ch 11) that reminded me of the work of Raymond Chandler, although The Big Sleep was published in 1939, 5 years after FdL.

The gimmick is that Nero Wolfe is an enormously fat man dedicated to orchids who never leaves his New York apartment so Archie Goodwin, as well as being the narrator, must be the investigator who does all the ground work, enabling him also to be involved in the action.

I was disappointed. The elimination of the suspects one by one rested mostly on their alibis and was pedestrian. The killer's identity was obvious with at least 20% of the novel still to go; the remainder depended on extracting sufficient evidence. More thriller than whodunnit, then, and by no means as stylish as the Philip Marlowe novels. Given how much classic work I have yet to discover, I'm not tempted to read any more.

One neat trick I noticed was the way he inserted references to previous cases (even though this is the first of the corpus), thus adding verisimilitude.

Selected quotes:

• “All lawyers look alike. It's a sort of mixture of a scared look at a satisfied look, as if they were crossing a traffic-filled street where they expect to get run over any minute but they know exactly the kind of paper to hand the driver if they get killed.” (Ch 4)
• “To have you with me like this is always refreshing because it constantly reminds me how distressing it would be to have someone present - a wife, for - whom I could not dismiss at will.” (Ch 5)
• “Though it used all the facts without any stretching. anyone could have said that much a thousand years ago when they thought the sun went round the Earth. That didn't stretch any of the facts they knew, but what about the ones they didn't know?” (Ch 5)
• “Anyone may make a mistake, but ... when a man sits himself up as cocksure as Wolfe did, he had always got to be right.” (Ch 5)
• “A yawn that would have held a tennis ball.” (Ch 8)
• “We were putting the soup before the cocktail.” (Ch 13)
• “Saul looked in the kitchen to make a face at me, as if his ugly mug wasn't good enough without any embroidery.” (Ch 16)

May 2026; 285 pages

First published in the USA in 1934

My paperback edition was issued by Bantam in 2008

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"Brat Farrar" by Josephine Tey

 After Brat left the orphanage, he ran away to sea, changing his name and eventually becoming a horse tamer in America until a broken leg brought him back to England. Here he encounters an actor who notices that Brat bears a striking resemblance to the missing heir of an estate. Brat agrees to become an imposter.

The family accept that Brat is Patrick, who was thought to have committed suicide. But Simon, Patrick's younger twin, who has now been disinherited, is sure that Brat is not who he says he is. After an attempt is made on Brat's life, he realises that Patrick's certainty stems from having murdered Patrick. But can he prove it? And even if he can, should he hurt the family who have made him a part of them?

Told from the limited third person perspective of Brat, and in the past tense, this elegantly written novel transcends the simple whodunnit genre. The characters are carefully drawn and complex, and the moral dilemmas at the heart are vivid. Brat's a crook and knows it, but unlike other novels written from the villain's perspective such as The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, Brat has moral doubts about what he is doing. His ethical dilemmas form the bulk of the plot. He's a good chap doing a bad thing; most readers will be able to empathise with this allowing them to identify with Brat and, in the end, be rooting for him.

The inspiration for the story probably came from the Tichborne Affair in 1866 when a man claiming to be Roger Tichborne, who had been believed to have died in a shipwreck in 1854, was accepted by his mother as her son; a subsequent court case decided he was Arthur Orton, an Londoner who had become a butcher in Australia. 

Selected quotes:

• "Riches, my boy, don't consist in having things, but in not having to do something you don't want to." (Ch 20)

The crime novel transformed, an entertaining and enlightening read. Placed 90th in the top 100 crime novels by the Mystery Writers of America

April 2026; 275 pages

• First published in 1949 by Heinemann
• My paperback edition was issued in 2009 by Arrow books

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

Josephine Tey crime novels:

• The Man in the Queue also published as Killer in the Crowd, originally written under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot (1929)
• A Shilling for Candles (1936)
• Miss Pym Disposes (1946)
• The Franchise Affair (1948)
• Brat Farrar (also called Come and Kill Me) (1949)
• To Love and Be Wise (1950)
• The Daughter of Time (1951)
• The Singing Sands (1952)

"A Shilling for Candles" by Josephine Tey

A classic whodunnit from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Tey's Inspector Grant on his second outing investigates the drowning of a Christine Clay, a movie star (married to the son of a duke), off the south coast. Recurring characters include Sergeant Williams, actress Marta Hallard and journalist Jammy Hopkins. The suspects include the husband, a man who was staying with the 

Distressingly - although casual and not-so-casual anti-semitism was typical of its time - Tey is quite prepared to stigmatise Jews on the basis of alleged racial stereotypes. There's also a prejudicial comment about a woman who does not have white skin. As with her other books, she also has a strange obsession with the idea that one can read character from a person's face, displayed in a scene where Grant is looking at the faces of participants at a monastic service: “Some were cranks (one saw the same faces at ‘anti’ meetings and folk dance revivals), some fanatics (masochists looking for a modern hair-shirt), some simple, some at odds with the world and looking for sanctuary, some at odds with themselves and looking for peace." (Ch 21)

It is written in the slightly camp style associated with this sort of cosy mystery, especially when they involve film stars, actresses and assorted artistes. Very much of its genre. I was slightly disappointed that the crucial evidence was withheld until the denouement so I felt I hadn't been given a fair chance to solve it myself. Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable and entertaining page turner.

Selected quotes:

• “Every six months she was in a different social sphere, she went up at such a rate. that takes a lot of living up to - like a diver coming up from a long way below.” ( Ch 5)
• “An unquiet life is a greater misery than wearing the badge of conformity.” (Ch 7)
• “Chamber music was much more attractive when one could combine it with tea at one's club and seeing about that frock at Debenham’s.” (Ch 19)
• “She had a high thin voice, and when she became enthusiastic or excited her delivery was painfully like a very old gramophone record played on a very cheap gramophone.” (Ch 19)

ASfC was adapted in 1937 into a movie called Young and Innocent which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

April 2026; 246 pages

First published in 1936 by Methuen (although my edition suggests first publication was in 1953 by William Heinemann)

My paperback edition was issued by Arrow Books in 2011

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

Josephine Tey crime novels:

• The Man in the Queue also published as Killer in the Crowd, originally written under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot (1929)
• A Shilling for Candles (1936)
• Miss Pym Disposes (1946)
• The Franchise Affair (1948)
• Brat Farrar (also called Come and Kill Me) (1949)
• To Love and Be Wise (1950)
• The Daughter of Time (1951)
• The Singing Sands (1952)

"Gently Does It" by Alan Hunter

 The book that introduced Chief Inspector George Gently who went on to solve crime in another 46 novels, not to mention a TV drama starring Martin Shaw that ran for eight series. 

Gently, a methodical homicide expert with Central on holiday, clashes with the local police whose attitude is more to gather evidence implicating the prime suspect. Of course the tiny discrepancies in the case are sufficient to locate the real culprit. The problem is not so much whodunnit but how it can be proved.

It was an enjoyable classic of its kind, although the protagonist's tic (he eats so many peppermint creams that one fears for his dental health and imminent diagnosis of diabetes) was a little annoying; I was reminded of Inspector Claud Eustace Teal's obsession with chewing gum in The Saint books by Leslie Charteris. The clash with the local plods is also a trope of this style of fiction.

Very much of its time. Gently is a sexless bachelor who lives with a landlady, several other male characters are rather less sexless bachelors living alone with women who do for them. There is a servant, a classic working class vamp, and a daughter of the rich dead man who speaks with a strong foreign accent despite apparently having lived entirely in England and her brother having no accent at all. Everyone has big lunches: "what does one's figure matter when one is one the wrong side of fifty?" (Ch 11)

Nevertheless, it is thoroughly entertaining.

Selected quotes:

"Susan was a pretty, pert blonde girl with a tilted bra and an accentuated behind. She wore a smile as a natural part of her equipment. She had a snub nose and dimples and a pleased expression, and had a general supercharged look, as though she was liable to burst out of her black dress and stockings into a fierce nudity." (Ch 4)

February 2026; 250 pages

First published in 1955

My paperback edition issued by Robinson in 2010

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"The Man in the Queue" by Josephine Tey

 Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time was chosen by the Crime Writer's Association as the best crime novel of all time; she also was ranked in 11th place for The Franchise Affair. Her historical play Richard of Bordeaux (written under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot, her real name was Elizabeth Mackintosh) was also a best-seller in the 1930s, propelling John Gielgud to superstardom and even making it to TV as far back as 1938. Tey was a respected writer. The Man in the Queue was her debut mystery novel, submitted for, and winning first prize in, a competition. It introduces her detective Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant. 

A man in a queue waiting for sold-at-the-door seats in a theatre is stabbed in the back. The man has removed all identifying marks on his clothing and has only a few coins in his possession, but he does have a revolver in his pocket. The police have to identify the victim and interview the other people in the queue. Swiftly, they suspect a "dago" (the book suffers from a certain amount of racial prejudice) who was in the queue and then left it. Much of the excitement of the novel is generated by the process of identifying this suspect and a thrilling manhunt across the Scottish moors that reminded me of The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. But once the quarry is captured, can the police prove their case? And, of course, there is a final twist in the tail.

It is a classic of the genre, despite the old-fashioned police procedures (I kept screaming 'forensics!' as Grant repeatedly handles the murder weapon), and a thoroughly readable book. 

There are some fabulous descriptions:

• “A pleasant country, England, at ten of a bright morning. Even the awful little suburban villas had lost that air of aggressiveness born of their inferiority complex, and were shining self-forgetful and demure in the clear light. Their narrow, inhospitable doors were no longer ugly in the atrociousness of cheap paint and appliqué mouldings; they were entrances of jade and carnelian and lapis lazuli and onyx into particular separate heavens. Their gardens, with their pert ill-dressed rows of tulips and meagre seed-sown grass, were lovely as ever the Hanging Gardens of Babylon had been. Here and there a line of gay motley child's clothes danced and ballooned with the breeze in a necklace of coloured laughter.” (Ch 5)
• “It sounded like the protesting row of an alarmed hen as she rockets over a fence to safety.” (Ch 11)
• “The river babbled its eternal nursery-rhyme song at his feet.” (Ch 11)
• “He felt grateful to the ancient hat that collapsed more than drooped over his face.” (Ch 11)
• “Gowbridge Police Court is at no time a cheerful building. It has the mouldering atmosphere of a mausoleum combined with the disinfected and artificial cheerfulness of a hospital, the barrenness of a schoolroom, the stuffiness of a tube, and the ugliness of a meeting-house.” (Ch 16)

I'm not convinced that every single clue is absolutely fair but my joy in reading an intelligently written whodunnit (there are some awful examples of the genre) was great.

Selected quotes:

• “In the old days in the Highlands, to take to the Hills had been synonymous with flying from Justice - what's the Irish call being on the run.” (Ch 10)
• “In any human relationship you've got to decide for yourself, apart from evidence, what a man is like.” (Ch 18)

As a dweller on the Sunshine Coast, I was charmed that a chapter was set in Eastbourne, complete with a mention of Holywell and Beachy Head. 

January 2026

First published by in 1929 under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot

My Penguin paperback was issued in 1978

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

Josephine Tey crime novels:

• The Man in the Queue also published as Killer in the Crowd, originally written under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot (1929)
• A Shilling for Candles (1936)
• Miss Pym Disposes (1946)
• The Franchise Affair (1948)
• Brat Farrar also called Come and Kill Me (1949)
• To Love and Be Wise (1950)
• The Daughter of Time (1951)
• The Singing Sands (1952)

"Laurels are Poison" by Gladys Mitchell

 A whodunnit set in a Teacher Training College for Young Ladies. It seems to be paying homage to Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers, a murder mystery set in a women's college at Oxford starring Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey. The plot is similar, and one of the lead characters, Laura, rather like Lord Peter, fills her speech with so many literary allusions that her dialogue needs to be interpreted rather than read: 

• “I fig-ew-er that the Duchess of Malfi put on burglar's gloves and then did those knots with a hair pin. ... There is going to be one devil of a fine pow-wow-plus-fight; referee and timekeeper that vicious and unstable Old Maid of the Mountains Principal du Mugne, Old Mutt and Young Jeff, defendants our humble selves.” (Ch 4)
• “Somebody must have collected a bevvy of Edgar Allans.” (Ch 4) This refers to a collection of chamber pots. Pot, pronounced to rhyme with Poe, thus Edgar Allan. Cockney rhyming slang or pure whimsy? 

It isn't just Laura who speaks like this. Many of the characters do and even the narrator joins in. “They stayed not for brake and stopped not for stone.” (Ch 7) is a line from Sir Walter Scott’s poem Lochinvar.

Generally speaking the dialogue has an affected, high camp quality that made this novel seem immensely dated. Of course the social context on single sex educational institutions and college 'rags' also seem old fashioned. As for the treatment of the working classes ... The servants are principally there to provide humour and as such are stereotypes. One family of servants are surnamed Ditch and have concerns about a discussion about archaeology: "do ee thenk their brains, like, ull stand et? Tes like so much wetchcraft to I.” They also suggest rape as a courtship procedure: "Master Jonathan ded ought to make a bold bed there, and bring her to et violent. Tes the only way. Her'd gev en, easy enough, ef he act forceful." (Ch 7) One of the servants at college, Lulu, is a black woman (her boyfriend is described as a “mulatto”) who speaks in stereotypical patois: “Sho’ we hasn’t another dry swab in de house wid all dis water.” (Ch 7) These are cliches of the worst kind. It might be argued that the novel reflects the social conditions of the time, and the attitude of the reading public. However, such an unthinking use of hackneyed archetypes suggests laziness on the part of the author and undermines suggestions that this work might have literary merit.

It also meant that I found it very difficult to empathise with or find credible any of the characters. This meant I struggled to maintain interest. And the plot was so convoluted that, well before the end, I was reading simply for the sake of finishing, without even caring whodunnit or why.

In chapter 15 the play Richard of Bordeaux by Gordon Daviot is referenced, presumably as a tribute to Josephine Tey (GD was her pen name), a vastly superior writer of murder mysteries, who Daughter of Time was regarded by the Crime Writers' Association as the best crime novel of all time (Gaudy Night came 4th, Gladys Mitchell does not feature in the top 100). 

Selected quotes:

• “The teacher is the stage-manager, not the chief actor.” (Ch 8)
• “You could love me, too. It's perfectly easy. My parents have managed it for years, and then not terribly talented.” (Ch 11)

January 2026; 237 pages

First published by Michael Joseph in 1942

My paperback edition was issued by the Hogarth Press in 1986

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"A Clubbable Woman" by Reginald Hill

The first Dalziel and Pascoe murder mystery.

Veteran rugby player Connie gets a knock on the head and goes home early to crash out. Later that evening he reports discovering his wife murdered. 

Set in and around a rugby club, most of whose members seem to be having affairs with the wives of their friends. There's adultery, poison pen letters and voyeurism but minimal forensics. There's domestic violence and sexism and very few police procedures. This murder mystery written in 1970 is set firmly in its period.

It also introduces Andy Dalziel, the fat superintendent, whose first appearance is recorded thus: “Superintendent Andrew Dalziel was a big man. When he took his jacket off and dropped it over the back of a chair it was like a Bedouin pitching camp. He had a big head, greying now; big eyes, short-sighted, but losing nothing of their penetrating force behind a pair of solid-framed spectacles; and he blew his big nose into a khaki handkerchief a foot-and-a-half square. He had been a vicious lock forward in his time, which had been a time before speed and dexterity were placed higher in the list of a pack’s qualities than sheer indestructibility. The same order of priorities had brought him to his present office.” (Ch 2) There is less focus on equally new debutant Peter Pascoe: “He seemed a highly educated kind of cop. The new image. Get your degree, join the force, the Yard’s the limit.” (Ch 3)

The narration is from multiple perspectives, each in the third person (fairly close) and the present tense.

It's an interesting and well-written debut novel but not nearly as good as the only other one in the series that I have read, the golden dagger winning Bones and Silence.

Selected quotes:

• “He shook his head, remembering when Mary had used to come down on Saturday afternoon. The catering like everything else had been more primitive then. Once they became wives they stopped coming. Then they tried to stop you coming. Then they even stopped that.” (Ch 1)
• “Antony talked eloquently, interestingly, without strain; with none of those changes of direction, grammatical substitutions, syntactical complexities, whose existence her linguistic lecturer assured her was the real framework of the spoken language.” (Ch 1)
• “Jenny grinned. She had tried to stop grinning. She thought it made her face fall apart in the middle, and she still had to count her teeth to assure herself she had not got twice as many as other people. But she kept on forgetting” (Ch 1)
• “Dalziel’s wife, now divorced, had gone off with a milkman fifteen years before. At least, she had gone off. The milkman might have been malicious invention.” (Ch 2)
• “The sky was cloudless, its blue more thinly painted than the blue of summer but the sun was too bright to stare in the eye.” (Ch 3)
• “the real triumphs were never boasted of, but remembered in secret; first with reminiscent delight, but soon with fear and cold panic.” (Ch 3)
• “He wanted sand which rose and fell like the sea, but so slowly that it was only when it drowned his own civilization that a man recognized its tides.” (Ch 3)
• “Buses and trains both set you thinking, she thought. But not in the same way. Trains gave you a rhythm, sent you into dreams, cut you off from reality. Buses were always stopping and starting; traffic, roadjunctions, lights; and of course, bus-stops. The world you passed through was observable. And real.” (Ch 3)
• “Death doesn’t change things, then. It merely petrifies things for those who go on living.” (Ch 5)
• “It is only by going too far sometimes ... that we know we have gone far enough.” (Ch 5)
• “People need more money at Christmas, even crooks. And there’s more about. In the shops; in the wagepackets; moving to and from the banks ... And it’s darker. Gloomier. Half the bloody day. Makes it all seem easier. Darkness encourages other things too. Children have to come home in it. Women in lonely places are there more in the dark than at any other time of the year. Or if you want something else, the weather’s rotten as well.” (Ch 6)
• “Things happen just because it’s Christmas. Life showing its arse at the universal party.” (Ch 6)
• “Nothing’s so important that it won’t keep. Or if it is, and you keep it too long, it stops being important, and that’s much the same thing.” (Ch 7)

January 2025; 232 pages (according to kindle)

First published 1970

My kindle edition was issued by HarperCollins in 2015.

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God 

Dalziell and Pascoe books in order:

• A Clubbable Woman (1970)
• An Advancement of Learning (1971)
• Ruling Passion (1973)
• An April Shroud (1975)
• A Pinch of Snuff (1978)
• A Killing Kindness (1980)
• Deadheads (1983)
• Exit Lines (1984)
• Child's Play (1987)
• Underworld (1988)
• Bones and Silence (1990)
• One Small Step (1990), novella
• Recalled to Life (1992)
• Pictures of Perfection (1994)
• The Wood Beyond (1995)
• Asking for the Moon (1996), short stories
• "The Last National Service Man"
• "Pascoe's Ghost"
• "Dalziel's Ghost"
• "One Small Step"
• On Beulah Height (1998)
• Arms and the Women (1999)
• Dialogues of the Dead (2002)
• Death's Jest-Book (2003)
• Good Morning, Midnight (2004)
• The Death of Dalziel (2007), (Canada and US Title: Death Comes for the Fat Man)
• A Cure for All Diseases (Canada and US title: The Price of Butcher's Meat) (2008) Shortlisted for Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award 2009.
• Midnight Fugue (2009)

Also by Reginald Hill: Joe Sixsmith (Luton PI) books in order:

• Blood Sympathy (1993)
• Born Guilty (1995)
• Killing the Lawyers (1997)
• Singing the Sadness (1999)
• The Roar of the Butterflies (2008)

"Bones and Silence" by Reginald Hill

This novel received the Gold Dagger Award in 1990 and was nominated for an Edgar Award.

Andy Dalziel is a fat, superintendent of police in a Yorkshire town; he is a heavy drinker. Peter Pascoe his Chief Inspector is a university educated thoughtful copper. There is both tension and respect between these two. Other major characters are the gay Sergeant Wield and heartthrob Constable Seymour. Outside the policemen are Ellie, Pascoe's wife, Mrs Horncastle, unhappily married wife of a rather narrow Canon and theatre director gorgeous Chung.

Dalziel witnesses a murder and arrests the man holding the gun, a local builder called Swain. But Swain pleads it was an accident. He is also receiving anonymous letters from someone who wants to kill themselves and has chosen him as a confidante. Meantime, Chung is producing a cycle of Mystery Plays and wants Dalziel to play God.

These parallel mysteries intrigue. The investigation is told from the PoV of the four detectives. It is a classic murder mystery from the days before DNA evidence.

But what I really loved about this book was the writing, which is heavily allusive and can be very funny. In some ways, it is like(and at the same time utterly unlike in voice) Chandler (eg in The Big Sleep), with some wonderful lines which lift simple detective fiction to another level.

Selected quotes:

• “Every amateur thespian in the area started sending press cuttings ... Aged Jack Points, stripling King Lears, Lady Macbeths of the Dales, infant prodigies, Freds ‘n’ Gingers, Olivier lookalikes, Gielgud soundalikes, Monroo mouealikes, Streep stripalikes, the good, the bad, and the unbelievable were ready to stride and strut, fume and fret, leap and lounge, mouth and mumble, emote and expire.” (1.1)
• “It was like a trainee para opting for ground crew after he'd stepped out of the plane.” (1.1)
• “Next time I feel in need of an untroubled and untroubling confidant, I'll ring the Speaking Clock!” (2. Intro)
• “Time’s the great enemy. You look back and you can just about see the last time you were happy. And you look ahead and you can't even imagine the next time.” (2. Intro)
• “Wield had the kind of face which must have thronged the eastern gate of Paradise after the eviction.” (2.1)
• “The oldest of the city's hospitals, it had been built in the days when visitors were regarded as a nuisance even greater than patients and had to prove their fitness by walking a couple of furlongs before they reached the entrance.” (2.2)
• “Devil detection begins at the feet, and those zodiac-printed moccasins with leather thongs biting into golden calves each separately sufficient to seduce a Chosen People, were a dead giveaway.” (2.3)
• “The bishop was said to respect his views highly, which her interpreter assured her was Anglican for being shit-scared of him.” (2.3)
• “Dalziel ... was notorious for his distrust of any form of intelligence that couldn't sup ale.” (2.4)
• “With the mingled relief and bafflement of a supplicant leaving the sibyl’s cave.” (2.6)
• “A bit of roughage is cheaper than a bit of rough. Paul's Epistle to the Aberdonians.” (4.2)
• “Resources were ... allocated not on the basis of argued priorities but by gentle vibrations sent out across a web of owed favours, or if that failed, by a not so gentle rattling of cupboarded skeletons.” (4.9)
• “Isn't the image most people have of God precisely that of a big fat copper who will put everything right?” (5.2)
• “He sipped his coffee which occupied the grey area between emetic and enuretic.” (6.5)
• “She was gorgeously angry and using a joke to keep it under control.” (6.5)
• “Clever buggers didn't play clever buggers with other clever buggers.” (7.2)
• “Leave assumption to the Virgin Mary.” (7.2)
• “This was Gotterdammerung, this was old Saturn in his branch-charmed forest acknowledging that the time of the Titans was past.” (7.2)
• “It was ... an attempt at comfort on a par with assuring Mrs Lincoln she'd have hated the rest of the show.” (7.2)

Thank you to Steve Flook for gifting me this book. Now I'll have to read the rest of the series!

December 2025; 524 pages

First published by Grafton in 1991

My paperback edition was issued in 2003

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

Dalziell and Pascoe books in order:

• A Clubbable Woman (1970)
• An Advancement of Learning (1971)
• Ruling Passion (1973)
• An April Shroud (1975)
• A Pinch of Snuff (1978)
• A Killing Kindness (1980)
• Deadheads (1983)
• Exit Lines (1984)
• Child's Play (1987)
• Underworld (1988)
• Bones and Silence (1990)
• One Small Step (1990), novella
• Recalled to Life (1992)
• Pictures of Perfection (1994)
• The Wood Beyond (1995)
• Asking for the Moon (1996), short stories
• "The Last National Service Man"
• "Pascoe's Ghost"
• "Dalziel's Ghost"
• "One Small Step"
• On Beulah Height (1998)
• Arms and the Women (1999)
• Dialogues of the Dead (2002)
• Death's Jest-Book (2003)
• Good Morning, Midnight (2004)
• The Death of Dalziel (2007), (Canada and US Title: Death Comes for the Fat Man)
• A Cure for All Diseases (Canada and US title: The Price of Butcher's Meat) (2008) Shortlisted for Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award 2009.
• Midnight Fugue (2009)

Also by Reginald Hill: Joe Sixsmith (Luton PI) books in order:

• Blood Sympathy (1993)
• Born Guilty (1995)
• Killing the Lawyers (1997)
• Singing the Sadness (1999)
• The Roar of the Butterflies (2008)