"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)