This is the 23rd book in Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe police procedural series. Dalziel is recovering from the injuries he suffered in Death Comes for the Fat Man and winds up in the middle of a murder, in the sleepy sea side town of his convalescent home, far from his partner Pascoe and the rest of the police force. While cranky Dalziel is up to his usual mischief and the story is interesting the awkward transitions of the story telling devices, from Dalziel's recorded messages to himself to the e-mail exchanges of an amatuer sleuth to her sister, are confusing and a little annoying. While devoted fans will want to follow the antics of Dalziel and make sure he's still kicking and causing trouble after Death Comes for the Fat Man it is not as enthralling as Hill's earlier works. ( )

A sequel to the Death of Dalziel, in which Dalziel goes to Sandytown to convalesce following his injuries. Naturally enough a murder occurs and Dalziel has to decide whether to lie low and let Pascoe run the enquiry or interfere. The scene is thus set for some classic Dalziel dialogue with the local Yorkshire characters. A thoroughly entertaining read which had me laughing out loud several times, but still managed to obscure the villain until the last few pages. Highly recommended. ( )

It is thought that you can't keep a good man down, and that is what has happened with this book. Fat Andy Dalziel is back, and although he is physically not recovered from his close brush with death in the last book, his mind is still as razor-sharp as ever. In true Hill fashion this book is hilariously funny, but also poignant and touching as well. I read a lot of British police procedural series, and I have a lot that I really enjoy, and continue reading each time as new books come out, but the Dalziel and Pascoe series is by far my favourite. The writing is extremly intelligent, the characters are so realistic, and each book is very different from the others. The mysteries are very tricky, and believe me the series does not grow stale at all even though this is the 22 book in the series. Andy finds himself right in the middle of a family drama when he retires to a sea side convalescent home to recover from his grievous injuries. He gets drawn up into the action, and his remarkable intellect pushes him on untl he solves the mystery. He doesn't get drawn up into all the red herrings that even infallible Wieldy and perceptive Peter Pascoe fall for. I for one am so glad that Dalziel is back. He is a remarkable character, and one of my very favourites. ( )

This is an enjoyable pastiche of the old-fashioned English detective story, clearly written with tongue firmly in cheek, but taken just seriously enough that the plot makes sense and the many twists and turns in the final chapters are at least possible, if not really plausible. And at 620 pages, it should be enough to keep you smiling through quite a lengthy journey.
As Hill warns us in his dedicatory note, the location and most of the main characters are lifted from Jane Austen's unfinished last novel Sanditon, which, as you may remember, unfortunately breaks off before the first body is discovered. Possibly it would have been more fun to be allowed to work this out by ourselves, but either Hill or his publisher evidently decided that there was a danger that those unfortunate readers who don't have Austen's posthumous works at their fingertips might fail to realise how clever he had been. Even so, there are quite a few more buried jokes for Jane Austen fans to discover in the text, not to mention a send-up of some of the conventions of chick-lit. ( )

After 'The Death of Dalziel' ,which was a really wonderful read,it was to be expected that this sequel would be just as good. I was therefore looking forward to continuing in the same vein .Imagine my chagrin when,with short intervals in between,one was subjected to endless 'e -mails ' throughout virtually the first half of the book. Frankly they just got in the way of the story and I'm sure that it would have flowed much better if the book had been written without them.
As Reginald Hill has demonstrated time and time again,he is an author who can write extremely well,but on a few occasions, he makes the most elementary mistakes in the construction of his books. With this one,which as I say,could have been a winner,he has failed completely I'm afraid. ( )

Incapacitated by what he refers to as "the big bang in Mill Street", Andy Dalziel finds that none of those who are near and dear to him want to take him on in his convalescence, and so he takes Ellie Pascoe's advice and books in at the Avalon in Sandytown. As we know the sea air is good for the health, and there is nothing like a seaside holiday for restoring health.

Sandytown is dominated by three families: the Parkers, Denhams and Hollises, very much intertwined and wanting between them to turn the sleepy little seaside resort into something much grander with a 5 star hotel, clinics, and health resort. Just the thing for the convalescent. But under the apparently united front of the Sandytown Development Consortium simmer tensions that go back decades. And then they result in the death of Lady Denham herself. That's when Peter Pascoe and his team move in to investigate.

But what of Andy Dalziel? He's supposedly on sick leave, but he desperately wants to be included, noticed, and consulted. Peter Pascoe on the other hand relishes the idea of running his own investigation yet again, but is he ready? How will he deal with Fat Andy sticking his nose in?

This is a fascinating read, and for me, doing some thinking about it, and some research afterwards, paid off, and I felt like I'd struck gold. For one thing I think Reginald Hill must have really enjoyed writing it.

There really are some things about this novel that I can't discuss, because, for the reader, working out what Hill has done here is part of the pleasure. This is another of those books that is not just crime fiction, but is also a literary work. It reveals a side of Reginald Hill that I hadn't known was there.

Getting used to the multiple points of view that reveal the story takes some getting used to. First of all there are the emails that Charley Heywood is sending to her sister; then the voice of Dalziel himself talking into a recorder given to him by his doctor for therapy. These two voices dominate the first volume, the first third of the novel. Then later in the novel we see the story not only from these points of view, but also from those of the individuals in the investigating team.

The structure of the novel is interesting too: A NOVEL in six volumes, it sees on the title page. And throughout, even on the title pages of each volume, Reginald Hill has left little clues like little Easter eggs. Get too complacent about them and you'll miss what he's up to.

Reginald Hill dedicated this novel "To Janeites everywhere". He says this novel has been ten years in the making, from seeds sown when he visited the Jane Austen Society's of North America's AGM. Reginald Hill wrote this novel not only for crime fiction readers, for those eagerly awaiting the next Dalziel & Pascoe, but also for those who know their Jane Austen. My advice to you, dear reader, read everything. ( )

This latest in the Dalziel and Pascoe series follows on from The Death of Dalziel, in which Andy was nearly killed by a terrorist blast. But it takes more than that to finish off the irascible detective. He is now recovering in a beachside clinic in Sandytown, promoted by its developers as 'the home of the healthy holiday'. It proves to be far from that. Dalziel soon becomes embroiled in a complex web of Yorkshire families and competing ambitions as lethal inheritance rivalries involving inheritance, power and sex play out. - and bodies pop up everywhere. He is soon joined by old favourites Chief Inspector Pascoe and Sergeant Wield, who battle to keep their convalescing colleague from interfering in what is becoming an increasingly messy situation. However, they soon have to rely on Andy's canny insights into human anture as he forms an alliance with a young psychologist, Charlotte Heywood, who is visiting one of the prominent families on Sandytown. I found the disjointed style which flicked between emails from Charlotte to her sister (complete with appalling spelling and grammar), Andy's conversations with a dictaphone (which he calls Mildred) and third person narration very disconcerting. It is not up there with my favourites in this series - but it is nonetheless an entertaining read. ( )

I read a lot of books whose raison d'etre is to be funny. They occasionally raise a smile. Reginald Hill guarantees at least a couple of joyful explosions of real laughter in each book. If for no other reason, I would thoroughly recommend this book.
Hill manages to write a light crime novel that says, "You know that this is rubbish, don't you?", and yet, at the same time, the story does grip and, in a strange world of suspended disbelief, makes sense too.
Pascoe grows up in this book. He starts to stand upon his own two feet but still, Daziel is the one who gets to the truth in his usual bluff way. I thought, at one stage, that Hill had tired of his creations but the last few D&P books have been right at the top of the genre. Excellent fun. ( )