This is the 20th in the Dalziel & Pascoe series, and my first for a few years – i’ve fallen behind after falling out of love with the genre somewhat. The D&P novels have developed increasingly convoluted plots, which, despite the familiarity of the main characters, and Reginald Hill’s style & language, make for quite tough reading. All that said, this is typical high quality RH, multi-layered & erudite, and drops down just the right side of pretension & total plot meltdown! Two words of warning; at 669 pages it’s a biggie, and; the plot has quite a lot of references back to his earlier novels, chiefly Dialogues of the Dead, where the Wordman serial killer was caught, or was he…??

Released on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 at to another bookcrosser in n/a, n/a Controlled Releases.

Sent to Jalna, fellow BCer and member of BookCrossingUK as part of a wish-fulfilment package. Read (after Dialogues of the Dead), enjoy, pass on, release, blah blah :0)

More generosity from BookGroupMan, for which much thanks. The tip about reading after Dialogues is noted, thank you.

I've been a bit silly! I kept having the feeling that someone had warned me to read something else before this one, but couldn't remember what and decided to go ahead anyway. Of course, once I started reading it I realised why the warning had been given and decided I would make an effort to find and read the other book this one keeps referring back to.

When I came to journal this, I found out what the other book was, and now realise that I did try to read it, gave up on it and released it! Now I'm not sure whether to try and get hold of another copy and have another go at it or not. Considering the height of Mt TBR - which includes a few Reginal Hill books - I definitely won't try too hard, I think!

Anyway, back to this one. I did enjoy it, although in some way - like a good wine - it was wasted on me. I am just as happy with supermarket plonk! I didn't "get" all of it and thought some of its great length was unnecessary, but I do feel quite pleased with myself for having completed such a tome, as I am not usually at all comfortable with bulky books.

I will release this into the wild shortly.

RELEASE NOTES:

Left on one of the shelves in the middle of the Bank.