REGINALD HILL – One Small Step. Dalziel & Pascoe #12. Novella. Collins, UK, hardcover, 1990. No US print edition.

   This is a slender (108 pages) little oddity that I’d heard about for some lime and finally managed to borrow a copy of. It takes Hill’s mainstays, Dalziel & Pascoe, into a future where a French astronaut becomes the first man to be to murdered on the Moon, in the year 2010. Pascoe is Commissioner of the Eurofed Justice Department, and Dalziel is in gouty retirement when the former is handed the politically sensitive case and enlists the aid of the latter. So there they are on the moon, grilling the international crew of the murdered man’s moon lander.

   It’s a bit odd seeing Dalziel and Pascoe with their roles reversed, and even odder “hearing” Dalziel’s dialect in a hi-tech setting. In a way it seems almost like a parody, though in others there’s Hill’s always excellent prose and often mordant view of the human condition. There isn’t enough space for much characterization apart from the two detectives, but all told it’s an enjoyable if minor piece.