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. ( )

Franny Roote returns in this latest installment of Dalziel and Pascoe following Dalziel's tight fight with death in the amazing predecessor. This is good, and I'd never advise anyone NOT to read a D&P novel, but they've been better... ( )

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. ( )