Customer Reviews
Prime Dalziel and Pascoe - By: Rick Darby, 12 Oct 2003 
If you are already familiar with Reginald Hill's Dalziel & Pascoe series, recommending this one is not going to be a hard sell. If not, check this out & discover one of the contemporary masters of the crime novel.
This is an ambitious work; Hill clearly intends to transcend the police procedural genre, & includes a paralllel story set in the ghastly killing fields of Passchendaele in the Great War that dovetails with the present-day police investigation that is the nominal subject of the book. It must be said that the interwoven story of Pascoe's ancestor (who shares his name) strains credulity; it's a literary construct that doesn't reallly come off.
But who cares? Hill as a writer is otherwise at the top of his game. It's full of witty dialogue (if only people in life -- myself included -- could set off such a string of verbal firecrackers, how much more entertaining our daily round would be!). Dalziel's Yorkshire dialect is a constant source of delight: I hope expressions like "nowt," "tha's," "lass," et al. aren't dying out. And as usual, the characters, especiallly the detectives & Pascoe's wife Ellie, are drawn in psychological depth.
The novel can be enjoyed as pure entertainment. But, notwithstanding the paralllel story's unlikelihood, it offers a window into the ungodly horrors of life in the trenches in 1917 & the savagery of military "justice" in the British army of the time.
Well written but prepare to have your credibility stretched - By: Mrs. K. A. Wheatley, 20 Nov 2000 
This was very interesting & I enjoyed the way that Hill juxtaposes the images of the war torn trenches & the modern day wasteland where the body is found. It focuses mainly on Pascoe, which didn't appeal so much to me as Dalziel is my hero. It also requires gigantic leaps of faith to believe that the coincidences & paralllels that hold the plot together can happen. Having said that Hill's work is never boring & I enjoyed it very much.
Past and present merge into a brilliant melange of mysteries - By: , 08 Jun 2000 Hill once again takes us into the world of Daziel & Pascoe, the two policemen from mid-Yorkshire who are as different in their personalities & modus operandi as they are matched in their intuitiveness. In this story Pascoe finds previously unknown family links with the Great War are suddenly playing an unexpected role in the present, & a series of uncanny coincidences lead him further & further into an investigation of past injustices. Meanwhile a series of unsolved crimes related to some animal rights activists & an unusual find in the grounds of a pharmaceutical laboratory are causing Daziel more unrest & personal involvement than he is used to dealing with. Hill has excelled himself in this book, raising his stature even further from outstanding crime-writer to author of first class literature & commentator on attitudes & blunders which the Establishment still prefers to,if not ignore, then address briefly & then pass over. A must for alll Hill fans, but it stands on its own for those wishing to sample this author for the first time.
