Reginald Hill was born in 1936, graduated from Oxford in 1960, and was a college lecturer in Doncaster, Yorkshire, until 1980 when he became a full-time writer. He has many successful and well-received novels including some "stand alone" novels such as The Collaborators (1987) and The Stranger House (2005). He has also written as Charles Underhill, Patrick Ruell and Dick Morland. He has written another series of detective stories about black private detective, Joe Sixmith.
Dalziel and Pascoe
His most well-known series of books has been about Andy Dalziel (pronounced Dee-ell) and Peter Pascoe. The first in the series, A Clubbable Woman was written in 1970, the most recent, Midnight Fugue in 2009. The twenty-four books (twenty-three novels and one book of short stories) have come at regular intervals over the years and are characterised by humour, great character development and a literary and intellectual approach to the crime genre.
Dalziel is the bluff Superintendent while Pascoe is the intellectual graduate. The two contrasting approaches to crime initially conflict in the early novels, but an unlikely affection develops between the two characters. Considering 39 years have passed since the first novel, the characters have not aged at that rate, while the world they inhabit has, but the characters have certainly aged and developed. By the later novels, Pascoe in particular has become much, more more like Dalziel.
Other characters run through most of the stories, such as Pascoe's wife, Ellie, and Sergeant Wield. Others, such as "Hat" Bowler and "Ivor" Novello are introduced to the series as it develops. Some come and go, such as the mysterious Franny Roote, villain in An Advancement of Learning and a much more ambiguous character in some of the later stories.
Social Comment in the Dalziel and Pascoe Books
Through the differing political outlooks of many of the characters (Ellie Pascoe is a socialist and feminist, in stark contrast to Dalziel) many issues relating to the modern history of Yorkshire and the World are explored in the books, with the impact of the miners' strike on coal communities underpinning Under World, and Islamic terrorism and far-right extremism playing a part in The Death of Dalziel. The books also go beyond parochial Yorkshire police matters to regularly involving the security forces (including Dalziel taking a trip to the USA) with issues relating to the IRA and Latin America explored in Arms and the Women and the Iraq War plays its part in Good Morning Midnight.
The BBC TV Series
The BBC started dramatising the Dalziel and Pascoe novels in 1996, starting with the first A Clubbable Woman, starring Warren Clarke as Dalziel and Colin Buchanan as Pascoe. The first three and a half series (13 episodes) followed the novels, after which new stories based on Hill's characters allowed a further eight and a half series to be made. Amongst those, a version of Dialogues of the Dead was made. This leaves seven full novels that have never been dramatised. While Ellie Pascoe, Edgar Wield and "Ivor" Novello are still key characters in the series of novels, they have been written out of the TV series, making it harder for some of the later novels ever to be dramatised.
The Dalziel and Pascoe novels are hugely entertaining to read. They are also thought-provoking, unusual and even occasionally quite difficult reads. Hill loves language and often employs unusual vocabulary. The plots do not always resolve themselves as satisfactorily as fans of more conventional crime fiction might expect: villains walk free, detectives miss murders; in one novel it is not even clear by the end whether any serious crime has taken place at all.
This is a wonderful series of novels. Read and enjoy!
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Duncan Hall - Duncan Hall is a semi-professional acoustic musician and lecturer in Government & Politics
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