From Publishers Weekly
One part traditional English whodunit and one part shadowy corporate thriller, Diamond Dagger winner Hill's 21st Dalziel/Pascoe mystery (after 2003's
Death's Jest-Book) weaves a complex and deeply satisfying tale. Pal Mciver is found dead, an apparent suicide, in a locked room of the old family house in Yorkshire. The circumstances mimic the suicide of his father, a former Ashur-Mac corporation executive, 10 years before. A book of Emily Dickinson poems found at the scene may hold clues to both deaths. Called in to investigate, detectives Peter Pascoe and Andy Dalziel find themselves entering an ever-widening and ever more intricate web of relationships. The particulars of some of these relationships hint at murder rather than suicide. Kay Kafka, Pal Mciver's stepmother, is particularly well drawn, a mixture of sadness, salaciousness, possible malice and cool intelligence. As the novel nimbly moves from character to character, it also calls into question the motives of Ashur-Mac, whose arms dealings ring a note of present-day relevance. Throughout, Pascoe and Dalziel are their usual witty, intelligent selves; they continue to be two of the more interesting police detectives in modern crime fiction. The descriptions of Dalziel are particularly fine: "like a shark dumped in a swimming pool, Dalziel provided a new and unignorable focus of attention." Hill has provided readers with a superior example of the mystery form—one with a deliciously cold sting in the final pages.
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From Booklist
Here is the twenty-first entry in Hill's award-winning series starring two Yorkshire detectives. Andy Dalziel and Peter Pascoe (Dalziel being the irascible Detective Superintendent, with Detective Sergeant Pascoe working under him but mostly around him) are worth watching for the comic tensions in their relationship. This time out, the team investigates a locked-room suicide (Hill's descriptions of the elaborate preparations the suicide takes are especially chilling). The case seems as closed as the room in which the local businessman's body was found until Hill and Pascoe discover that this suicide was committed 10 years to the day after the victim's father committed suicide in the same way and that the new suicide has left a very damning cassette tape. A cut-and-dried case morphs into a cold-case scenario in this wickedly clever, classic Brit-mystery puzzle, loaded with Yorkshire atmosphere and mordant wit.
Connie FletcherCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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