Sun 19 Feb 2012
Reviewed by Ray O’Leary: REGINALD HILL – Bones and Silence.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[8] Comments
REGINALD HILL – Bones and Silence. Delacorte, hardcover, 1990. Dell, paperback, 1991. First published in the UK: Collins Crime Club, hardcover, 1990.
After a night on the town, Superintendent Andy Dalziel witnesses a shooting in the house across the way from his kitchen window. Though he’s sure what he saw was murder, the Law will not prosecute solely on the testimony of a drunken policeman, and the two surviving occupants of the house — the husband and lover of the deceased victim — both insist she was killed accidentally while they were trying to prevent her suicide. Then one of them disappears.
Meanwhile, Dalziel has been getting anonymous notes from a woman threatening to kill herself, and been finagled into playing God in a series of Medieval Mystery plays staged by the newly-appointed Director of the Civic Theater, a lovely Eurasian.
Just another routine Hill effort, his “routine” consisting of fully realized characters, sly wit and an engaging plot, well told. Bones and Silence is over 300 pages long, but Hill manages to pull off one surprise after another, right up to the end.
At which point (right up to the end), I suddenly realized what the relationship between Dalziel and his chief underling, Chief Inspector Pascoe, reminded me of: Check out Mayor Skeffington and his nephew in Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah (Spencer Tracey and Jeffrey Hunter in the faithful film) and see if you don’t find some remarkable similarities, even down to Pascoe/Hunter’s wife.
February 19th, 2012 at 7:30 pm
I’m a great fan of the early Pascoe/Dalziel books, they shed so much light on English life in the Seventies, and you see the main characters developing.
For me, Andy Dalziel rules !
The Doc
February 19th, 2012 at 7:54 pm
I’m hit or miss on reading books in this series. I know I should have read them in order as they came out, but I didn’t. I’ve left too many gaps too, including this one.
February 20th, 2012 at 1:15 am
This is easily my favorite in the series. I’ve read it multiple times, always with pleasure. Coincidently I have been listening to the unabridged audio book version while driving for the last several days.
February 20th, 2012 at 12:20 pm
Dalziel and Pascoe had a very successful TV series on the BBC. It is available on DVD, but Amazon has a warning that there appears to be a production problem with the DVD (wanna bet it has something to do with the transfer to NTSC from Pal?).
Several episodes in full (but in 10 minute parts) are available on YouTube. The quality is good and worth a look before anyone notices and YouTube removes them. Just search for Dalziel and Pascoe and pick a story.
February 24th, 2012 at 9:23 am
I’ve been hit-or-miss reading this series, too. The later titles lack energy.
February 24th, 2012 at 10:37 am
I read some of the early ones (DEADHEADS, A CLUBBABLE WOMAN and some other titles I can’t recall) when they first came out in paperback. I was in college at the time and I never understood why Hill was so lauded. I can’t remember anything about the few I read. ON BEULAH HEIGHTS (1998) received nothing but raves from book critics and blog writers. That’s the one I will return to if I ever feel like reading Hill again.
February 24th, 2012 at 4:33 pm
John
If you ever read Hill again, I hope you’ll tell us about it on your blog. We were talking before about how a reader’s perception of a book or series of books sometimes change over the passage of time, so I’m wondering if you might see them differently now. And of course, maybe not!
I think RULING PASSION was the last one I’ve read, and it was three years ago. I reviewed it here: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=450
It comes fairly early in the series (1973), when the relationship between Dalziel and Pascoe was still under construction.
February 24th, 2012 at 1:18 pm
Having done quite the opposite, I think it might have helped if I’d read the series in order. Not for the cases that Dalziel and Pascoe work on, but in terms of the somewhat prickly relationship between the reurring characters, which includes Pascoe’s wife. If there’s a key factor in Hill’s popularity, that has to be a good part of it.
Not that I’ve read any of the recent ones, George, but when you say they lack energy, I can understand that, since over the years the books got longer and longer, much like those by P. D. James and Elizabeth George did. Or is that only an impression I’ve gotten?
Personally, even reading them hit or miss, in no particular order, I’ve enjoyed reading the ones I have, without ever having had the urge to go back and fill in the ones I’ve missed.