Reginald Hill at Tangled Web UK

Page Updated: 09/07/2007

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Reginald Hill - Page 2

First British Edition Harpercollins (2000)

Arms and the Women
See Review by Andrew Taylor - author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series
When Ellie Pascoe finds herself under threat, the men in her life assume it's because she's married to a cop.
But while they trawl after shoals of red herrings, Ellie is blasted off course with a motley crew of women on a voyage of discovery whose perils make Scylla and Charybdis look like a pair of Barbie dolls.
Irish arms, Colombian drugs, and men who will stop at nothing, create a tidal wave which threatens to sweep her away. She heads out of town in search of haven, but instead finds herself at the very eye of the storm in a remote clifftop house undermined by the sea.
Fat Andy eventually smells a Security Service rat and comes steaming to the rescue, but for once it's too little, too late. Ellie's on her own (apart from her Middle England friend, Daphne; an octogenarian aid-worker and her vapid secretary; a gorgeous South American money launderer; an ancient crone; and a female cop who gets up her nose) and must reach deep down into her reserves to find the strength to survive.
After the huge success of On Beulah Height, the question was, where could Reginald Hill take his Dalziel and Pascoe novels next? The answer is, even further! Arms and the Women is wholly Hill: pacey, perceptive, humorous, intelligent, and above all compulsively readable.
‘An intricate, witty and gripping thriller’ Jessica Mann, Sunday Telegraph
‘Luminously written, thrilling in the best old-fashioned sense of the word, unexpectedly erudite, and beautifully structured’ Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail
‘Brilliantly written, highly amusing and extraordinarily readable’ T.J. Binyon Evening Standard

First British Edition Harpercollins (1999)

Paperback - Harpercollins (2000)

Singing the Sadness
See Review by Andrew Taylor - author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series
Joe Sixsmith is going west.
But only as far as Wales where they keep a welcome in the hillside and the Boyling Corner Choir has been invited to compete in the Llanffugiol Choral Festival.
Trouble is, no one seems to have heard of Llanffugiol. And instead of a welcome, all they find on the hillside is a burning house with a mysterious woman trapped inside.
Add to this in rapid succession an aggressively suspicious policeman, a patronizing headmaster, a drug-dealing student, a gang of disaffected locals bent on sabotaging the festival, and a caretaker's daughter who seems ready to go to extraordinary lengths to take care of Joe, and what we have is the kind of criminous confusion which the famous
Sixsmith detective technique soon turns into utter chaos.
But Joe is no quitter. Doggedly, aided by little more than that instinct for truth which is his unique talent, he moves forward over the space of a single weekend to uncover crimes which have been buried for years.
Written with all its predecessors' humour and verve, Singing the Sadness takes Joe Sixsmith into a new dimension where morality is blurred and even the light of truth is only a very faint glimmer on a very dark hillside.
Acclaim for Reginald Hill
'Reginald Hill is among the most entertaining and invigorating detective novelists writing at present' Patricia Craig, TLS
'Reginald Hill is one of the few English crime writers who can hold his own against the Americans. His gore count may not be as high but there is a wonderful wit and dexterity about his writing' Kate Atkinson (author of Behind the Scenes at the Museum)
'Retire Morse and hire any deft whodunnit by Reginald Hill' Boyd Tonkin, Independent
'The finest male English contemporary crime writer. Compassionate, intelligent and entertaining' Val McDermid, Manchester Evening News

First British Edition Harpercollins (1998)

On Beulah Height
See Review by Val McDermid - Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill
See Review by Andrew Taylor - author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series
They'd moved everyone out Of Dendale that long hot summer fifteen years ago. They needed a new reservoir, and an old community seemed a cheap price to pay. They even dug up the dead and moved them too.
But four inhabitants of the dale they couldn't move, for nobody knew where they were. Three little girls who'd gone missing, and the prime suspect in their disappearance, Benny Lightfoot.
This was Andy Dalziel's worst case and now fifteen years on he looks set to relive it. It's another long hot summer. A child goes missing in the next valley, and as the Dendale reservoir waters shrink and the old village re-emerges from the depths, old fears and suspicions arise too as someone sprays the deadly message on the walls of the small town of Danby: BENNY'S BACK!
Myth and music mingle as the mid-Yorkshire team delve deep into the past and into their own reserves of experience and endurance in search of answers which threaten to bring more pain than they resolve.
Reginald Hill has built a reputation for faultless writing, sparkling wit, and sharply observed characterization, but with On Beulah Height he has surpassed himself. Imbued with a sense of devastating loss, leavened by unquenchable humour and spirit, it is his most haunting novel yet.
'The term masterpiece is not one to be thrown around lightly, but it's hard to know what else to call a novel in which everything… comes together so satisfactorily' T.J.Binyon, Evening Standard
'Full of loss, terror and vengeful fury, balanced by affection and a ravishing landscape, the novel shows how far beyond the conventional whodunnit crime fiction can go' Natasha Cooper, The Times
'A long, richly complex, often lyrical and genuinely haunting crime novel' Mike Ripley, Daily Telegraph
'Reginald Hill stands head and shoulders above any other writer of homebred crime fiction.' Tom Hiney, Observer

First British Edition Harpercollins (1997)

Paperback - Harpercollins (1998)

Killing the Lawyers
See Review by Andrew Taylor - author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series
See Review by Val McDermid - Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill
When Joe Sixsmith, Luton's premier PI, turns to the town's top law firm for help in a motor -insurance dispute, he gets assaulted verbally by one partner and physically by another, and, vowing vengeance, walks out. So when someone starts whacking the partners one by one it's hardly surprising that Joe is elected the man most likely.
At the same time he is trying to find out who is threatening all kinds of nastiness against top athlete Zak Oto if she wins her New Year's Day race to celebrate the opening of Luton's splendid new Pleasure Dome. Everybody looks suspicious, from her ex-con minder Starbright Jones, through her trainers, past and present, to her own family And the only reassurance Joe has that he’s getting warm is when someone starts trying to kill him!
Joe Sixsmith first appeared in a short story. The author found writing about him so enjoyable that he felt the redundant lathe operator turned private eye from Luton deserved his own series of novels.
This is the third novel to feature Joe Sixsmith and it confirms what the critical prophets have said from the start, that in the depth of his humanity, the honesty of his outlook, the bewilderment of his responses to much that the modern world confronts him with, and the strength of his resolve to give everything he undertakes his best shot, Joe is truly a hero for our times.
'The Sixsmith series has a buoyancy and delectability of its own. Patricia Craig, Independent
'Reginald Hill stands head and shoulders above any other writer of homebred crime fiction' Tom Hiney, Observer

First British Edition Harpercollins (1996)

Asking For The Moon
This collection of short stories is sure to win new readers and at the same time delight old ones, with Reginald Hill divulging how Fat Andy and Peter Pascoe met, and thus made crime-writing history, in the novella, The Last National Service Man.
Pascoe's Ghost finds the inspector in Poe country, as he investigates the fate of a woman who seems to have slipped from the world, and hasn't been seen by a soul for a year - unless you count her brother, who claims her ghost is haunting him. But Pascoe isn't the only one who has a brush with the supernatural, and Dalziel’s Ghost sees the man who normally wouldn't be seen dead in a graveyard expressing a surprising interest in the ‘other side’.
The last story in this collection, One Small Step, looks to the future where murder on the moon requires the personal intervention of Commissioner Peter Pascoe of the Eurofed Justice Department, who turns to his old mentor, Andy Dalziel for assistance ...