The fertility of Regional Hills imagination,the range of his power,the sheer quality of his litary style never cease to delight.
DCI Pascoe continues to receive correspondence from Franney Roote as xcon Roote aspires to become an author and academic.
Edgar Wields rent a boy informer is torn between protecting him and his duty as a cop.
DC Bowler has found the love of his life. Unfortunately her life is filled with horror.
DS Andy Dalziel gives strength, direction and deep sympathy with his staff to solve this multi level thriller. ( )

DCI Peter Pascoe is again being bedeviled by his nemesis, Franny Roote, this time through long, chatty letters that Roote keeps sending him detailing his travels in academia and Europe. Pascoe remains convinced that Roote is a serial killer, especially as numerous individuals connected to him keep mysteriously dying in such a way that gives an advantage to Roote, but as ever, he cannot prove this. Meanwhile, DC “Hat” Bowler is pursuing a romance with the woman of his dreams, Rye, but readers of the series know something important about her that Hat doesn’t; and DS Edgar Wield becomes involved with a rent boy whom he hopes to be able to save…. As always with Mr. Hill’s novels, there are multiple threads running throughout Death’s Jest-Book, and they’re all very layered and dense. In essence, this novel can be seen as the third in a trilogy (including Arms and the Women and Dialogues of the Dead) featuring Pascoe’s relationship with Franny Roote, but there’s ever so much more than just that going on. Highly recommended! ( )

Great as usual - make sure you read :Dialogues of the Dead" first though. ( )

Hops about a bit - but in the end the three threads merge well to a good climatic ending ( )

The usual casr of inmates in Yorkshire's fictional police department, this account weaves three separate stories into one. A recently released, wrongly accused felon and his weird relationship with the officer who put him in prison intertwined with a young constable's fatal attraction to his librarian amour; topped-off by another officer's alternative lifestyle that includes a homeless boy who feeds him news of local criminal activity.
All in all a good read, but sometimes confusing as it jumps from story to story and character to character. ( )