A Cure for All Diseases

Inspired by Jane Austen's Sanditon, Hill has written this clever crime novel in which Andy Dalziel is a convalescing patient in a Sandytown private nursing home. When a murder is committed Peter Pascoe leads the investigation without his superior Dalziel. At least, that's what Pascoe thinks, but Dalziel is difficult to keep under wraps. Terrific storyline, an innovative presentation style, and a cast of highly-developed characters keeps interest high. The differences between the two detectives are stunning: Pascoe, university educated, goes by the book; Dalziel is ribald, his speech littered with folksy Yorkshire phrases, and he is not averse to breaking rules. And although they work well as a pair, it would be tough getting Pascoe to show more admit it. This was fabulous entertainment even if Hill had omitted the criminal aspect. My favourite Reginald Hill so far.

One of my favourite quotes from Dalziel:
"You've been running your eyes over me like an Aberdeen undertaker wondering whether to charge by the inch or the ounce." show less

This was a real treat to read. I really enjoyed the narrative structure -- e-mail observations from sharp-eyed psychologist-in-training Charley Heywood, tape-recorded observations from the always amusing (if often horrifying) Andy Dalziel, and of course third-person narration to fill in the rest. The extensive use of first person for the first "volume" of the book really drew me in, especially to Charley. Her personality really shone through in those e-mails, with clever turns of phrase, family in-jokes that can be figured out from context (and that are not spelled out) and idiosyncratic spelling/use of punctuation. And it was also quite entertaining to be inside Dalziel's head -- usually we're on the outside, but here we are privy to show more all the workings of his mind. For fans of Dalziel, this is not to be missed.

With the focus on the characters, it does take the entire first volume to build up to the murder, but boy, what a murder! Sensational circumstances and no shortage of suspects. Exciting! Along the way suspects are offered up, dismissed, pondered again; alibis are broken down or pieced together from others' testimony; evidence is gathered and witnesses interviewed, with Dalziel and Charley providing their own perspectives to complement or perhaps counteract the third person.

As usual, the writing is excellent. In addition to really capturing a personality with Charley and Dalziel, Hill once again shows his customary skill with comparisons. Wieldy's face is described as being "as unreadable as a footballer's biography", and another person is so horrified by something that his face "made Edvard Munch's The Scream look like a smiley." And of course he always manages to put some hilarious expressions into Dalziel's mouth and render the Yorkshire accent in print without descending into complete unreadability, as can be the danger with dialect.

I borrowed this from the library but liked it so much I may have to pick up my own copy. It could do for a reread later, perhaps after I have read Sanditon, by Jane Austen, which served as the inspiration for the structure of this book. I feel like I'll get even more out of it under those circumstances. Highly recommended for D and P fans, and perhaps newcomers who are also Austenites (although you may want to read the previous book, The Death of Dalziel aka Death Comes for the Fat Man, first). show less

A Cure for All Diseases (which is death, by the way) is both a clever update of Jane Austen's unfinished novel Sanditon and a classic Dalziel and Pascoe murder mystery. And unlike P.D. James' recent effort, Death Comes to Pemberley, Hill fuses the two genres expertly and both modes work well.

Following on from The Death of Dalziel, the Fat Man is booked into a swanky clinic in the seaside resort of Sandytown (now in Yorkshire, not Austen's original Sussex) to recuperate from his brush with death. To aid his mental recovery, Dalziel starts a diary on tape, recording his observations and personal reflections. This first person narration is countered by the misspelled, ungrammatical, chick lit-esque e-mails of Charlotte 'Charley' Heywood, show more who is staying with the Parkers in Sandytown. Now, I didn't like Charlotte in 'Another Lady's continuation of Sanditon, and I can't stand her here - everybody loves her, including Dalziel, because she's 'bright' and no doubt feisty, but actually she's little more than a contrived literary device. Making her a psychology student makes sense, though.

Other characters from Austen's original make an appearance, in new forms and relationships, from the larger than life Lady Denham, who holds more than a few residents of Sandytown by the beach balls, to Sir Edward 'Teddy' Denham and 'Sid' Parker, no longer rivals for Charlotte's affection, shall we say. The Hollis family (Lady D's former in-laws) mentioned in passing by Austen are coloured in by Hill, and the doctor that Tom Parker is initially seeking when he overturns his carriage (Land Rover) becomes a faith healer called Gordon Godley. Renaming the Parkers' house 'Kyoto', instead of 'Trafalgar', is possibly one joke too far, however.

Hill sets the scene with Austen's novel for the first three hundred pages, then Lady Denham meets a typically inventive end, and Pascoe and the team arrive in town to investigate. I haven't read (or watched) any Dalziel and Pascoe mysteries in years, but the gruff Yorkshire detective and his rather more refined sidekick are instantly familiar, not to mention all the ridiculous nicknames Dalziel gives his team ('Hat' Bowler and 'Ivor' Novello). Franny Roote, Pascoe's longstanding nemesis, also makes a reappearance in Sandytown, but is he a benign or a sinister presence?

Reginald Hill has created another well plotted puzzler, combined with an inventive take on Austen's novel that is rather more sympathetic to the original than his twist on Emma ('Poor Emma'). I picked up on some of the clues, but failed to connect them and solve the mystery. I also love Hill's Yorkshire turn of phrase, and his vivid use of imagery - 'Lady D chatting away like an elephant dancing in that old Disney cartoon', and Dalziel appearing like 'the effigy of some oriental god paraded to bless the rice crop' are two of my favourites. I must start re-reading my old D+P mysteries again soon! show less

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 show more 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. show less

After barely surviving a terrorist blast Superintendent Andy Dalziel is convalescing at a swanky private clinic in the seaside resort of Sandytown in Yorkshire. He befriends another young visitor to the town, Charlotte (Charley) Heywood, who is the daughter of an old Rugby mate of Dalziel’s and a psychologist reviewing the benefits of alternative therapies. They are both keen observers of the people and happenings in the town and record their observations: Andy using a digital audio recorder provided by his doctor and Charley via a series of emails to her sister. As with all fairly closed communities there are a couple of prominent families whose lives seem to impact everyone in the town directly or indirectly and the same is true of show more Sandytown which is the setting for a soon to be opened alternative healing centre. When one of the town’s most prominent citizens is killed in a gruesome way a full police investigation, headed by Dalziel’s old partner Peter Pascoe, gears up but Andy and Charley’s continuing observations play a key role in the solving of the murder.

This is, more than usually, a review specifically of the audio version of A Cure For All Diseases narrated by Jonathan Keeble. Because, regardless of how good the original content is, Keeble added a truly wonderful element that I don’t think could exist in the print version. His portrayal of the two main narrators of the story, ageing male Dalziel and young, somewhat excitable female Charley is truly magnificent and he rounds out the reading with an entire cast of minor players that are equally beautifully depicted. Coming back to my iPod each day became a real treat over the past week or so and I now have a sense of the anticipation people used to get as they ‘gathered round the wireless’ to hear the latest radio play in the days before television.

The format and, to some extent, the content of this story is actually Hill’s homage to Jane Austen but I don’t think it matters all that much if you’re an Austen fan and can recognise what he’s done or not. Far more important is that it provides an interesting, different approach to the standard police procedural. As someone who has lamented the formulaic writing by other well-known authors of late I applaud both the decision to do try something new and the successful execution of that decision. About half of the story is told via the recorded observations of Charley and Dalziel and I thoroughly enjoyed their dual points of view, especially the brave inclusion of a significant narrative voice that wasn’t Dalziel or Pascoe. The rest of the story is told via a more traditional narrative but the two forms are pretty seamlessly integrated.

There’s a strong undertone of humour through this book that I haven’t noticed in the series before (although I’ve not read a large number of them so maybe it has been present). Both Dalziel and Charley’s epistles are full of humour that suits their respective characters: Dalziel’s is coarse and reminiscent of a 1970’s comedian dripping with barely concealed sexual innuendo while Charley’s is full of the biting observations that a modern young woman might share with her friends in an online chat room. I found this added a very natural component to the characterisations and, particularly in the case of Dalziel, provided a layer of credibility to a character that I’ve struggled to believe in previously. He’s still all-seeing, all-knowing Fat Andy that nearly everyone is instantly afraid of, but the humorous monologue provides an insight into what makes him tick and because of it I cringed less and saw him as a more well-rounded character.

The book isn’t the fastest paced story you’ll find, especially where the two narrative voices overlap and recount the same events from their different perspectives, but the relatively slow revelation of events allowed the myriad of characters to be more fully developed than would otherwise have been the case. Rather than being ‘filler’ content of the ‘a book must have 500 pages’ variety this was a highly nuanced building up of a picture of the town and its inhabitants and I was completely captivated. I have to admit the final conclusion bordered on contrived but I forgave this minor lapse in what was otherwise a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Hill is to be congratulated for maintaining interest in his long-running series by trying something innovative with this book. I also admire the fact you don’t need to be a die hard fan of Dalziel and Pascoe to enjoy the book (although I doubt it hurts if you are). If you’re at all keen on audio books I’d highly recommend you relax and let Keeble’s narration spirit you away to Yorkshire for a few hours. show less

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more fun. show less