Good Morning, Midnight

Classic Hill with scintillating use of language, puns, allusions, and a nifty mystery to boot. Not only that, you'll learn who the "funnyboogers" are. Some people dislike Hill's work as being too cerebral. Nonsense. They can be read on a multitude of levels, and Hill remains one of my favorite authors.

An intriguing and complex story. A man is found dead in a locked room, ostensibly having blown his head off. The story becomes even more mysterious when it's learned he killed himself in a way identical to his father some ten years earlier, even to the Emily Dickensen book of poems found open to virtually the same page in each case.

Statements from the participants given to the police are layered throughout the book and each provides a very show more different view of events. Lots of questions move the story along. What is Andy's relationship to Kay? Why does Andy keep trying to steer Pete away from his questioning what appears to be simply a case of copy-cat suicide? And who is the rather ordinary VAT inspector who seems to know more than he should?

The ending will be disconcerting to those who like everything tied up with a bow. I found it to be very satisfactory. Great title, by the way, the significance of which is revealed in the book. show less

A return to a more standard format for Dalziel and Pascoe following the more arc-ish set of stories. The story itself is very interestingly formed, as you know what happened from the very start, just not why, or how people will respond to it. As ever it's the characters that are the real delight though, with plenty of references to previous books and events to keep the characters totally consistant and interesting.

An enjoyable Dalziel & Pascoe story, with liberal quantities of Emily Dickinson allusions, and a background that draws heavily on the Matrix Churchill ("Arms to Iraq") case of the 90s. The plot develops largely through a series of conflicting, tape-recorded witness statements.

Interestingly, the BBC TV version of this story dropped the arms-dealing part of the story altogether, and replaced it with a more domestic scandal involving toxic waste - were they concerned about it hurting their overseas sales, I wonder?

When Pal Maciver commits suicide, Detective Superintendent Dalziel is in a hurry to get the case handed over to the uniformed police, but Detective Pascoe has an uneasy feeling about the case that just won’t go away. It’s not only that Pal committed suicide exactly in the same way that his father had killed himself a decade earlier, or that the man’s family seems to be exceptionally hateful toward each other, or that the previous suicide had, apparently, been swept under the rug rather quickly and by none other than Dalziel himself. Pascoe finds himself unable to let the case go, even as Dalziel orders him to do so….This is, I think, the 21st Dalziel and Pascoe novel, and while it’s significantly shorter than its immediate show more predecessors, it’s still quite dense in terms of personalities, motives and historical resonances. I’m not sure it would make a lot of sense if you haven’t read the previous novels, but it is certainly another gripping tale! Recommended. show less

Reginald Hill is one of my favourite detective fiction writers - in fact, he is probably my favourite contemporary detective fiction writer. I have read almost all of his Dalziel & Pascoe novels and am particularly fond of the novels of the late 1990s and early noughties - partly it must be my familiarity with the novels and the fact that one of the traditions of crime fiction I particularly like is the use of allusions and intertextuality. Good Morning, Midnight, borrowing its name as it does from a poem by Emily Dickinson, is no exception. A good Dalziel & Pascoe novel but one that isn't likely to become one of my particular favourites - it would have to have lots of Wield in it to achieve that status.

This is a cracking read! Daziel appears to be behaving strangely: he is allowing Kay Kafka to wrap him around his little finger. Pascoe suspects that she has murdered her step son, but Daziel insists that it is suicide.
A fantastically convoluted plot twists and turns right to the last page, where it transpires that ...........
No, I wont spoil your enjoyment!

Avery strange story revolving around the suicide, perhaps murder, of a local big shot. It seems like everyone is lying and everything is going around in circles while Pascoe pursues clusure.

This book was a bit too convoluted for me.