Death's Jest-Book

By Reginald Hill

Three times DCI Pascoe has wrongly accused dead-pan joker Franny Roote. This time he’s determined to leave no gravestone unturned as he tries to prove that the ex-con and aspiring academic is mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

Meanwhile, Edgar Wield rides to the rescue of a child in danger, only to find he has a rent-boy with a priceless secret under his wing. DC Bowler is looking forward to a blissful New Year with the girl of his dreams. Unfortunately, her dreams are filled with a horror too terrible to tell . . .

And over all this activity broods the huge form of DS Andy Dalziel. As trouble builds, the Fat Man discovers (as have many deities before him) that omniscience can be more trouble than it’s worth and that sometimes all omnipotence means is that you can have any colour you want, as long as it’s black.


From the Hardcover edition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: May 14, 2010
• ISBN: 9780385672603

Reginald Hill

Reginald Hill is a native of Cumbria and former resident of Yorkshire, the setting for his novels featuring Superintendent Dalziel and DCI Pascoe, ‘the best detective duo on the scene bar none’ (‘Daily Telegraph’). Their appearances have won him numerous awards including a CWA Gold Dagger and Lifetime Achievement award. They have also been adapted into a hugely popular BBC TV series.

Reviews for Death's Jest-Book

[bobaloo624u · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The usual casr of inmates in Yorkshire's fictional police department, this account weaves three separate stories into one. A recently released, wrongly accused felon and his weird relationship with the officer who put him in prison intertwined with a young constable's fatal attraction to his librarian amour; topped-off by another officer's alternative lifestyle that includes a homeless boy who feeds him news of local criminal activity.All in all a good read, but sometimes confusing as it jumps from story to story and character to character.

[richardgarside · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hops about a bit - but in the end the three threads merge well to a good climatic ending

[thorold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another entertaining, complex Dalziel and Pascoe novel. This time the literary hook is the relatively obscure Romantic poet Thomas Lovell Beddoes, and we have an engaging bit of academic skulduggery involving competing biographies. A small irritation is that neither the author nor the publisher has bothered to get a native speaker to check the little bits of German that are scattered throughout the text, leaving a number of annoying little typos. Not very professional.Something to be aware of is that, whilst most of the D&P novels are essentially self-contained, this one follows closely on from Dialogues of the Dead — in essence, it's a reopening of that case — so, especially if you are obsessive about spoilers, make sure you've read the earlier book first.