An Advancement of Learning (1971)

Further adventures of Dalziel and Pascoe, and highly recommended as always. ( )

Reginald HIll died earlier this year so there are no more Dalziel and Pascoe books to come. However, since I've only read one other (Death Comes for the Fat Man) and there were 24 in all I will have quite a few to keep me going. This is the second in the series and, as luck would have it, I picked up the first, A Clubbable Woman, a few months ago.

The duo are called to a post-secondary institution after a body was unearthed when a statue was removed to make way for expansion. It is soon discovered that the body is that of Miss Girling, the head of the college five years before. It was thought that she had died in an avalanche in Austria while on her annual skiing holiday. Dalziel and Pascoe both take up residence at the college while trying to sort the crime out. That puts them in close proximity to the students and staff, many of whom also live on campus. In fact, one of the people that is now an instructor is a former classmate of Sargeant Pascoe. He and Ellie take up where they left off in college, namely in bed.

Soon they have a second murder on their hands. A student, Anita Sewell, was found dead in the sand dunes near the golf course. Anita had accused one of her instructors of having an affair with her and when he was tired of her falsifying her grades so she was suspended from school.

Now Dalziel and Pascoe have to decide if the two murders are linked and who committed them.

This book was published in 1971 which, coincidentally, was when I started University. Either Hill embellished college life quite a bit or a prairie university doesn't offer the scope that a college in nothern England does because I don't remember seeing much in the way of Ouija boards or Wiccan practices. And, although there was a lot of experimenting with drugs and sex, we wouldn't have been doing it with members of the faculty. Even then faculty mingling with students was frowned upon.

However, it makes a good story and I'm going to keep my eyes open for more Dalziel and Pascoe books. ( )

This was my first try of the much-recommended Dalziell and Pascoe series and I came away disappointed. The action takes place in the 1980s at a time when colleges of further education and the like were growing towards university status. Holm Coultram college of Liberal Arts and Education had been a small teacher training college for women which became co-educational and offered degree courses. The tensions in the common room arising from this change are central to the story.

Dalziell is a standard, curmudgeonly old-school copper with the stereotypical misogynistic and class-conscious attitudes of his ilk. His subordinate (and, in this book, dogsbody) Pascoe is better educated and more liberal-minded. Somehow I couldn't really generate much liking for the pair, nor believe in their relationship.

The plot is clever enough and the denoument reasonably unexpected. I can't fault the procedural aspects of the book. I do have an irrational prejudice against the name Franny for a central character but lack of empathy with the policemen is my main reason for abandoning this series. ( )

Audiobook of the second Dalziel and Pascoe, abridged on 3 CDs and read by Warren Clarke, who played Dalziel in the late 90s tv adaptation. I've previously reviewed the novel itself here. This is a good abridgement, and Clarke is an excellent reader, but of necessity it does leave out some of the character development. An enjoyable version but probably better for those already familiar with the book. ( )

[2006-04-04] The second Dalziel and Pascoe novel sees the pair at a college of higher education after the discovery of a corpse under a statue's foundation block. Naturally, life gets even more complicated, and not just because they have to wade through both student and staff politics in their pursuit of the truth. Fresh corpses are provided, and it's up to Dalziel and Pascoe to decide which were murder and which were suicide, ideally without becoming corpses themselves.

Dalziel has no time for students, and the feeling's mutual. But Dalziel doesn't let his dislike lead him into underestimating his opponents, while the students make the mistake of thinking that Dalziel's a fascist pig and therefore stupid. Pascoe's feelings are more ambiguous, as he was a graduate recruit to the police force. His former university friends don't approve of his choice of his career, and his liberal sympathies don't always endear him to his colleagues, but this case reassures him that being a copper was the best way for _him_ to change the world for the better. The pair's different experiences and views combine to form a formidable team in this setting, something they'll need to deal with the criminal they're trying to pin down. Even near the end, it seems that it may be a case of knowing who and how without having quite enough evidence to prove it...

This early entry in the series is a relatively simple police procedural, rather than the complex literary game to be found in some of the later novels, but still has Hill's characteristic style and wittiness. It's one for all fans of the series, whether your taste runs to the shorter novels or the long, psychologically complex ones, as it sets up some of the series background. Apart from developing Pascoe's character, it introduces two of the recurring non-police characters. Pascoe is reunited with old university friend Ellie Soper, whom he later marries: and this is the first appearance of Franny Roote, who reappears much later in the series as a major character in a story arc spanning several books. And it is, of course, an entertaining book in its own right. ( )