Beulah Height by
Reginald Hill
pbk out February 99
(HarperCollins)
at £5.99
The latest entry in the Dalziel and Pascoe series is possibly the best so far. This will seem a bold claim to those who have admired such strong novels as Under World, Recalled To Life, Pictures Of Perfection and the Gold Dagger- winning Bones And Silence. But such is the power, wit and ingenuity of the new novel that it deserves at least to be ranked alongside those earlier successes, if not ahead of them.
The locale is evocative - the village of Dendale, submerged fifteen years ago so as to provide a Yorkshire reservoir. For some reason, there has recently been a little run of mysteries featuring similar settings – A Likeness In Stone by J. Wallis Martin and The Judgment Of Strangers by Andrew Taylor come to mind - no doubt because there is something spookily compelling about the idea of a "lost place" of this kind as a background for mystery. Hill makes marvellous use of the idea. At the time Dendale was drowned, a spate of child abductions and murders occurred before the presumed culprit vanished. Now, in a period of summer drought, the village is beginning to reappear - and another young girl goes missing.
For very different reasons, Dalziel and Pascoe feel a particular compulsion to solve the crime and this keen sense of involvement gives extra force to Hill's story. It is both moving and funny and, for all the heat of the sun that beats down on the small community, there is a darkness about On Beulah Height (and the Mahler songs which play an important part in the plot) which makes reading it an unsettling, albeit richly satisfying, experience.
(
Martin Edwards
- author of the highly acclaimed Harry Devlin Mysteries)
