Exit Lines

Reginald Hill (left) and critic-author Mike Ripley attending a mystery writers’ convention “somewhere in [our] happier--and much younger--days,” as Ripley explains.

(Editor’s note: This tribute to the late British novelist Reginald Hill comes from Karen G. Anderson, a Seattle-area resident who for many years wrote about crime fiction for January Magazine. At one time an Apple Inc. writer , Anderson has, for the last decade, “designed, written, and produced innovative online communications for business and consumer audiences.” She currently holds seats on the boards of the Clarion West Writers Workshop and Northwest Folklife.)

Crime-fiction writer Reginald Hill worked in a class by himself. He expanded on a niche created by Peter Dickinson for deeply literary, profoundly psychological, and quirkily creepy crime fiction. Hill, however, used all of those elements in the structure of a police-procedural series starring the unfailingly uncouth, cagey Superintendent Andy Dalziel (pronounced “Dah-ELL”) and his colleague, the perpetually worried Chief Inspector Peter Pasco.

That 24-book series unfolded over 39 years and was always contemporary. Someone who had only a passing interest in crime fiction could read the series and come away with a firm grounding in the social and political history of Great Britain, from the emergence of British feminism, through the Thatcher era, to terrorism and government surveillance technology, to the transformation of urban Britain into a multicultural society. (The series’ final installment, Midnight Fugue [2009], has the son of a Jamaican crime lord making a bid for a seat in Parliament.)

Enthusiastic fans of the crime fiction turned out by Hill’s contemporaries, such as Ian Rankin and Peter Robinson, often shy away from Hill’s own books because of the strong classics component that runs through them. I admit I wrestled with Arms and the Women (1999), based on the Iliad (and sub-titled “The Elliad,” after Pasco’s stridently feminist wife), terming it “dauntingly erudite.”

But while a reader lacking a classical education might struggle to catch the allusions (I’ve often wished for an annotated version), Hill wrote in clear, pungent prose and devised fast-paced plots that carried you right along. And he was an absolute master of dialogue.

He was also a master of characters. I confess I juggled the ambiguities and puzzles in many of his later books simply to find out what would happen to the astonishing Detective Sergeant Edgar Wield, a man as strikingly ugly as he was courageous and soulful.

And Hill contributed some of the creepiest bad guys to contemporary crime fiction--creepy because some of them turned out not to be bad guys at all ... maybe.

The last three books in the Dalziel/Pascoe series were all about death, illness, and the consequences of aging. Hill, who died this last Thursday at age 75 of cancer, was clearly playing with the ideas of lessening powers, and how society treats the ill and elderly. And how people remember the dead. Midnight Fugue sees the feisty Dalziel returning to work after near-death in a terrorist bombing and panicking when he realizes he’s headed off to the Monday-morning staff meeting ... on a Sunday.

Reginald Hill wrote genre books that did the genre proud. If you haven’t read them, and want to, a fine place to start is at the beginning, with A Clubbable Woman (1970), in which Dalziel despairs of ever turning Pascoe, an effete university graduate, into a hard-drinking, rugby-playing copper. It’s an easy read. You could also jump into the series (as I did) with On Beulah Height (1998), which shows Hill in stellar form. In that novel, the literary bits play second fiddle to a rip-roaring plot that makes the most of the colorful and complex secondary characters in this series. My own person favorite is Pictures of Perfection (1994), which focuses on Sergeant Wield. But if you have literary friends who turn up their noses at crime fiction, hand them the quotation-filled Dialogues of the Dead (2001) or Arms and the Women, and smile.

This is a series I read over and over again, the way I read the works of Australian author Arthur W. Upfield and the Maigret mysteries by Belgian-born fictionist Georges Simenon. I’m hoping there’s another book somewhere, perhaps to be published posthumously. I am not ready to say good-bye to Andy Dalziel.

READ MORE: “Reginald Hill Obituary,” by Mike Ripley (The Guardian); “In Memory of Reginald Hill (1936-2012)” (At the Scene of the Crime); “Tribute to Reginald Hill,” by Norman Price (Crime Scraps).

Hill Toppers

Following up on yesterday’s posting about the death of British novelist Reginald Hill, we asked his friend, critic-columnist Mike Ripley, to choose his five favorite books from among Hill’s extensive oeuvre. He replied with the following:

Under World (1988): Set in Yorkshire in the aftermath of the infamous miners’ strikes. I’m a Yorkshireman and the son of a miner, so I took this one personally. Reg got it spot-on, and his humane liberalism shines throughout.

A Pinch of Snuff (1978): The book that brought Reg national publicity because of the subject matter (snuff movies). As ingenious as always and in parts wickedly funny.

On Beulah Height (1998): Infuriatingly clever, close on a masterpiece. Even the title is a clue.

Urn Burial (1973): Writing as “Patrick Ruell,” this is Reg in Michael Innes mode: a fantastical story involving archaeology, mad scientists, and his beloved Cumbrian Fells. Written with zest and outrageous panache, as all his Ruell books were.

The Spy’s Wife (1980): Sadly overlooked in the Hill canon, but a heartfelt, romantic take on the female angle when a British spy is discovered (as they often are) to be a traitor.

“I could go on,” Ripley remarks at the end. That would be fine, except we’d really like to throw this open to The Rap Sheet’s well-read audience. What are the Reginald Hill novels you’ve most enjoyed over the last 40 years? Please make your selections in the Comments section at the bottom of this post.

Reginald Hill Passes Away

This morning’s Guardian newspaper brings the avery sad news that British author Reginald Hill, who created the Yorkshire-based detective team of Andrew Dalziel and Peter Pascoe, died yesterday at age 75. As the paper’s Richard Lea notes:

Hill charted the ups and downs of his two contrasting sleuths in more than 20 novels published over four decades after his debut, A Clubbable Woman (1970), alongside a substantial body of other crime fiction and thrillers. He won the Crime Writers Association’s Golden Dagger in 1990 for Bones and Silence, and the Diamond Dagger for the series as a whole in 1995.

Writer Ian Rankin, who won the Diamond Dagger himself in 2005, paid tribute to Hill’s great good humour, the intelligence of his writing and the generous advice he gave to young authors.

“I didn’t read crime fiction until I was in my 20s,” Rankin said. “Hill was one of the first British writers I read. His plotting was elegant and his characters were larger than life--once you read about Andy Dalziel he’s never forgotten. I daresay there are shadings of him in my Inspector Rebus--they’re both bolshie and maverick and they don’t look after themselves.”

In a note sent our way this morning by Mike Ripley, a longtime UK books critic who writes the monthly “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots, he explains:

I knew [Hill] had been ill and in and out of hospital for about eight months (with a brain tumour and breast cancer), but [he] didn’t want to make it too public, so relatively few people knew. ...

The eagle-eyed reader of my “Getting Away with Murder” column may have noticed occasional mentions of “Professor Charles Underhill”--a venerable academic who has devoted his life to finding and cataloguing all the jokes in Scandinavian crime fiction (!) Charles Underhill was one of Reg’s pen-names and it was Reg’s suggestion that this totally spurious character “only communicates in Old Norse these days.”

He had a wicked sense of humour and I will miss him, as he was a loyal friend and great supporter of young crime writers--as I was once.

Ripley adds that his own tribute to Hill will appear in The Guardian tomorrow morning, Saturday.

In addition to his Dalziel and Pascoe novels, which inspired a BBC-TV series (1996-2007), Hill penned five books about Joe Sixsmith, a black private investigator in the Bedfordshire town of Luton, and a series of thrillers published under the pseudonym Patrick Ruell.

Our condolences go out to Hill’s family.

READ MORE: “Reginald Hill, R.I.P.,” by Martin Edwards (‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’); “Reginald Hill” (The Telegraph); “Death of an Icon,” by Rhys Bowen (Rhys’s Pieces); “In Memoriam--Reginald Hill,” by Ayo Onatade (Shots); “Farewell, Reginald Hill,” by Barry Trott (Blogging for a Good Book).

“Violence” Brings Victory

British thriller writer R.J. “Roger” Ellory has won the 2010 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award for his book A Simple Act of Violence, beating a field of seven other distinguished authors.

As a press release explains, “The Birmingham-born author was presented the prize by broadcaster and regular festival-goer Mark Lawson at the opening night party (Thursday 22nd July) of the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate [England]. He receives a £3,000 cash prize, as well as a handmade, engraved beer barrel provided by Theakstons Old Peculier.”

Simon Theakston, the executive director of T&R Theakston, said: “The standard of the shortlist was particularly high this year and our decision was a tough one. However, R.J. Ellory’s A Simple Act of Violence is a most impressive, fascinating, and surprising book and a worthy winner of this year’s Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. A fast-paced thriller, each page seems to bring about a new twist and take you deeper into a world that could only have come from a true master of crime fiction.”

The shortlist of nominees for this commendation can be found here. The original longlist of 20 competitors is posted here.

During the same ceremony, Reginald Hill (The Woodcutter) was given the inaugural Theakstons Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award.

READ MORE: “R.J. Ellory Wins Crime Novel of the Year Award,” by Alison Flood (The Guardian); “Harrogate,” by Dan Waddell (Murder Is Everywhere).

The Book You Have to Read: “A Clubbable Woman,” by Reginald Hill

(Editor’s note: This is the 32nd installment of our ongoing Friday blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today’s selection comes from Simon Wood, a British-born engineer turned Anthony Award-winning novelist, who now lives in California. He’s the author most recently of the thriller We All Fall Down.)

In 1970, newbie British crime writer Reginald Hill introduced the mystery community to mid-Yorkshire police detectives Andy Dalziel and Peter Pascoe with A Clubbable Woman. Over 20 Dalziel and Pascoe novels later, Hill is a giant in the British crime-writing world. In 1995, he received the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Crime Writers’ Association. But it all started with A Clubbable Woman.

In that book, a character named Connon returns home more than a little worse for wear after picking up a concussion from being kicked in the head during a rugby match. Connon tries to sleep off the effects, and when he wakes up he finds his wife, Mary, dead in front of the telly from a single blow to the head. The finger of suspicion points to Connon, seeing as he spent five hours in the house with the body. It’s hard to believe he slept, while a stranger entered his house and bludgeoned his wife to death. And thanks to his concussion, Connon is unsure of his own guilt. Into the mystery step Dalziel and Pascoe. Dalziel is a detective superintendent who approaches police work with the mentality of a sledgehammer. No remark is too rude or insensitive. No method is unacceptable as long as he busts through to the truth. Pascoe is different. The murder of Mary Connon represents his first major case as a detective sergeant on Dalziel’s patch. He’s sensitive and thoughtful towards the family of the victim. Police work, he believes, can be carried out without abusing anyone’s civil rights.

I read this book regularly and with each read, there’s been a discovery which has endeared me to the novel even more. By all accounts, Dalziel and Pascoe weren’t intended to be the principal players in a series, and it shows. They don’t hold center stage in these pages. They have to share it with a number of competing point-of-view characters, including Connon. While Dalziel and Pascoe do shine bright as characters, they shine just as bright as the rest of the engaging cast. Even the minor figures here are memorable.

Class plays a strong part in this book. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but it was certainly a feature of the times. In the aftermath of the 1960s, the social precept in Britain was changing during the ’70s. It’s there throughout the book. Dalziel represents the old guard. He worked his way up through the ranks to become a detective superintendent. Pascoe represents the future of policing. He’s a university graduate, groomed for greatness and being fast-tracked through the system. There’s friction because of these dynamics. Both men are intelligent and insightful, but their outlooks are different. Dalziel believes coppers are grown, not manufactured. The class issues continue with the other characters. The story centers around the goings-on at a local rugby club. Connon was an ex-rugby star who continues to play for the love of the game. Rugby was seen as a middle-class game, while soccer was the game of the masses. This class mismatch is illustrated by the resentment shown by Connon’s neighbor towards him. These class conflicts help signal an era of significant change in Britain.

The motivation for murder is an interesting factor here. In every one of Hill’s works, there’s something mundane about why someone commits homicide. But this isn’t to say that the reasons are boring. They aren’t. They’re just familiar. There is no fantastic motive--just the illustration of how ordinary people can dig themselves a hole so deep that they think murder is the only thing that will solve their problems. There’s something very recognizable and comfortable in Hill’s stories--people with petty beefs, people trying to hide their sins, jealously that goes too far. We identify with these people and the lives they lead. Under the right circumstances, we could fall down the same holes that the characters do in A Clubbable Woman and the other Dalziel and Pascoe books. Hill illustrates that he has a great understanding of people and the dumb things they do when push comes to shove. When you examine the reasons why Mary Connon is killed in this story, it all boils down to the weaknesses and indulgences of human beings.

I guess there’s a certain amount of nostalgia in this work for me too. Although I was a toddler in 1970, the picture of ’70s Britain is one I remember with affection. But nostalgia aside, A Clubbable Woman is a great first novel. Despite coming up for its 40th birthday, it reads as fresh as it did way back when, thanks to its depiction of human frailty, and that’s how great mystery novels last forever.

Fat Men, Sunglasses, and Vampires, Oh My

Veteran political reporter Helen Thomas may be losing her seat in the White House briefing room after speaking too honestly and critically about lame duck George W. Bush, but we seem to have retained our front-row outlook on crime-fiction developments. The problem is, however, that today represents one of those occasions when the amount of work far exceeds the number of hours available, so a wrap-up post seems much in order.

• With the publication of Reginald Hill’s latest Andrew Dalziel and Peter Pascoe novel, The Death of Dalziel, due next month in both Great Britain and the United States (where it’s being retitled Death Comes for the Fat Man), critic and columnist Mike Ripley delivers a fine encomium to the English crime writer in Shots:

… I can’t remember the first Reginald Hill book I read, and that has been bugging me of late, ever since I realised that the forthcoming The Death of Dalziel was the 21st novel in the series.

Now twenty-one books featuring the same characters, over a period of 37 years is quite an achievement for a writer, not to mention a strenuous test of loyalty and stamina for the reader. Personally, I can think of only two other writers who have commanded my devotion, respect and failing eyesight for that mystical 21-book marathon: Michael Innes and John D. MacDonald, though both wrote many other books outside of the series-hero envelope.

As has Reginald Hill. In fact until I started this little homage, I hadn’t realised just how many books he had written since his first tentative steps into crime fiction around 1969. When I suggested to him that it might be 48 novels, he said:

That sounds very reasonable. I counted religiously till I got to ten, then in a more secular fashion till I got to 20, and after that I lost interest in keeping a tally. I mean, if twenty doesn’t mean you’re a real writer, then what number does?

Even my very basic skills in mathematics tell me, therefore, that the Dalziel and Pascoe series for which he is best-known, is in fact only about 44% of his output, not counting short stories (at which he’s been known to turn a deft hand).

How does he do it? I mean, physically, what is the secret behind his prolific output? It seems there isn’t one:

I really am very boring and it’s straight on to the old PC. No artificial stimulants, seven-per-cent solutions or communion with the spirits.

You can enjoy all of Ripley’s tribute here.

• Sarah Weinman offers the second installment today of a roundtable discussion she had recently with several other U.S. book reviewers about Patrick Anderson’s new non-fiction work, The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks, and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction. Today’s topic seems to be the work’s inclusiveness, and both Jerome Weeks and The Rap Sheet’s own Dick Adler offer their opinions.

• Lee Goldberg’s Main Title Heaven this week highlights a pair of pretty easily forgotten TV crime dramas: 1981’s McClain’s Law, which placed former Gunsmoker James Arness in the role of a retired, injured cop who returned to active duty in order to avenge the killing of a friend, and then remained on the force--much to his superior’s regret; and A Man Called Sloane, a single-season (1979-1980) Quinn Martin production that imagined The Wild Wild West’s Robert Conrad--absurdly--as a freelance U.S. secret agent who takes on occasional jobs for an intelligence operation called UNIT. Conrad would’ve been better off sticking with the Stephen Cannell series he left in order to make this turkey, The Duke.

• Just in case you’re wondering (though I doubt you are) what ex-James Bond actor Timothy Dalton thinks about his successor in the role, Daniel Craig, skip over the Cinematical for the answer.

• Abraham Lincoln, in reviewing a book that obviously didn’t rock his world, remarked that “People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.” The same could be said of the latest video compilation of ominous lines delivered by CSI: Miami police protagonist Horatio Caine (David Caruso). If you delighted in a previous selection of Caruso declarations, then this fast-paced “sunglasses edition” of one-liners is for you.



• After Hard Case Crime editor-publisher Charles Ardai sent an e-note around this morning, lamenting last week’s passing of 85-year-old novelist Richard S. Prather, I asked Ardai--who last year republished Prather’s The Peddler (1952)--whether he has any plans to bring back more of that writer’s work. “Not in the near future, since we’re already bought up through mid-’08,” he answered, “but it’s possible we might do another in a year or so ...”

• Following on Susan Mansfield’s piece in The Scotsman about “Tartan Noir” authors, Shots editor Mike Stotter wonders “what other UK Noir Packs we have out there”:

We tend to go for a generic area as opposed to north, south, east or west. Obviously Ken Bruen heads the Irish Noir Gang (although John Connolly might like to lay claim to the crown). Do we have Welsh Noir? I suppose candidates for this would be Malcolm Pryce and Bill James. I don’t think we have Norfolk Noir, West Country Noir or even Essex Noir (come on [Mike] Ripley, make me look a liar). There has been the emergence of London Noir, Dublin Noir and Nottingham Noir. But I can’t really see Oxford Noir or Cheltenham Noir or even Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Noir taking off, can you?

• And Crimespree Cinema’s Jeremy Lynch reports that a film version of Charlie Huston’s vampire detective novel Already Dead (2005) is one step closer to being made. “Scott Rosenberg has been picked to write the screenplay ...,” Lynch explains. “The film rights are held by Phoenix Films and will be produced by Michael De Luca of De Luca Productions. This actually is a good thing, as De Luca is known for his love of comics and graphic novels. I think his sensibilities will be in line with Houston’s work. No word yet as to who will direct or star in it.” Lynch adds that Already Dead is the first of five planned books featuring bloodsucking private eye Joe Pitt, and “[t]he hope is to turn them into a movie franchise.”