On Beulah Height by
Reginald Hill
hbk out February 98
Published by HarperCollins
at £16.99
When a long hot summer reveals the drowned village of Dendale, it resuscitates memories the former inhabitants would have preferred to remain dormant. The villagers were evacuated fifteen years before to make way for a new reservoir, all but four of them - three missing girls and the man suspected of abducting them, the strange and swift Benny Lightfoot.
As the water level drops, old feelings start to emerge, exposed to fresh scrutiny by the graffiti that appears on the walls of the town where the Dendale villagers were rehoused. "Benny's back," it announces ominously. Then another girl goes missing.
Every copper has a case that haunts and obsesses him, and for the eternally vulgar but acute Andy Dalziel, it's the missing girls of Dendale. Now he's faced with what appears to be a rerun of his old failure. This time, he's determined not to be defeated. As past and present intertwine like the complex musical composition that also has its place in the story, we share an elegaic sense of loss that threatens to engulf Hill's characters.
With his customary wit and wisdom, Reginald Hill has given his readers a jewel of a book. He manages with enviable ease the difficult task of blending marvellously evocative writing with a plot that turns as cleverly as anything in the genre, leaving the reader sighing, "of course!" in affectionate exasperation. This is a masterclass in the art of writing fiction. I doubt I'll read a better book this year.
(
Val McDermid
- Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill)
On Beulah Height by
Reginald Hill