Customer Reviews

Deadheads

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Hill's Dalziel & Pascoe novels tend to be either gutwrenchingly intense (I cried my way through The Wood Beyond) or light-hearted and fun. Deadheads is definitely in the second category. It's a slightly offbeat story about a charmingly vague accountant called Patrick Aldemann, whose boss believes he's a multiple murderer. Detective Inspector Pascoe begins to investigate Aldemann, and discovers a disturbing number of deaths which have benefited the mild-mannered gardening enthusiast. As he continues to dig, he starts to realize htere could be other, equally criminal explanations which implicate other people, but Pascoe is abruptly pulled off the case. Patrick Aldemann is one of Hill's best creations. For two hundred odd pages we puzzle over whether he's a daffy, sweet-natured eccentric who just happens to have amazingly good luck, or whether he's actually a vicious sociopath. You wouldn't think it would be funny, but it is. Although not as good as Hill's comic piece de resistance Pictures of Perfection (Hill's best book), it is certainly worth reading.

Pascoe finds himself asking this question when a friend of Andy's comes to him to tell him that he thinks a fellow-worker has been bumpuing people off, and now he appears to be trying with him. Dick said that a lamp blew up on him and his garage door almost fell on top of him. With no more than this, Pascoe sets out to find out if the man who loves roses is responsible for about seven or eight killings. People seem to have died all around him, but the deaths were all ruled as accidental. This book is a wonderful portrait of a psychopath, and Hill's depicition of his character and the character that everyone else sees is quite remarkable. An excellently well-written murder mystery, but in the hands of Hill, a good novel too.

This one was definitely way up on my list of favorites. The play on language is even funny to me, a deaf person! I figure Hill must have known about the Grateful Dead, and the resident Deadheads, who I grew up with in the Bay Area in California. The information about roses was wonderful since my Dad planted them, but certainly was not as obsessive about his flowers as Patrick.
This rather charming man is not only a fanatic about his roses, but is also (or seems to be) a man who gets rid of those in his way, financially or otherwise.

It's kind of eerie to think that we have murderers among us, but I guess if we all realize that often innocents are sent to jail, the guilty are still at large! Patrick is so unassuming and charming, that he even makes friends of Pascoe and his wife Ellie. I really liked the plot development between the two women, one who prides herself on her radical causes and the other who would normal be referred to as elitist and prissy, but is actually otherwise.

The ending again surprised me. Just put it down to the fact that Hill likes to keep his public guessing. A very well-written and humorous mystery.

Karen SAdler

Mrs. Aldermann is angry. She is angry with herself for having had a heart attack. One deadheads so the young flowers can grow she instructs her grandnephew Patrick.

Fast forward and Patrick Aldermann is a grown man, an accountant with a wife and the extensive garden Mrs. Aldermann had. A co-worker has reason to wonder about his conduct and contacts Andrew Dalziel and Peter Pascoe. Amusingly, Peter's wife Ellie commences a friendship with Aldermann's wife at about the same time. It turns out that Dalziel went to school with Patrick Aldermann's mother. Pascoe visits a former employer of Patrick Aldermann and the information is not favorable to Aldermann.

There is a lot of local scene-setting in the story adding to its interest and its tone. The book has rounded characters and presents puzzles not easily solved.

Maybe this isn't quite tip top for the author, but it's pretty darn close. Light hearted compared to some, yes, although Hill practically always will have you smiling with he so very English dialogue and the overbearing personality of Daziel. However, Hill keeps you also interested in the minor characters such as wield and Singh. But the character of Patrick Aldermann who might be a murderer although the deaths surrounding him appear accidental makes this especially worth reading. I personally consider Reginald Hill, Val McDermitt, and Charles Todd as my favorite mystery authors, although Peter Robinson comes close.

Here's another Reginald Hill classic--more than 25 years old--but fresh as a daisy (or a rose, in the case of this themed story). In the chronology of the Dalziel/Pascoe partnership, "Deadheads" happens about three years into Peter and Ellie Pascoe's marriage (baby Rose is two at this time). Fat Andy is in his prime and Sergeant Wield is still in the closet, but seriously enamored of another copper. The main focus of this tale is on one Patrick Aldermann, a local businessman whose great love in life is rose gardening.

Author Hill gradually spins out Aldermann's strange history that begins as a illegitimate child and evolves into respectable, middle-class professional and family life through a series of apparently lucky events along the way. However, author tips his cards a bit to the reader in the first pages of the novel as youngster Aldermann is taught by an unsympathetic rich aunt that deadheading (cutting spent rose flowers) must be done in order to allow other "young buds to develop and flower." Is this a lecture that young Aldermann takes so seriously that people in his life are literally pruned out? That question is basically the plot of the book and author Hill keeps the reader confused and guessing right to the last page. Along the way, there are great characters, humor, humanity and a lot of information about roses. In fact, the latter opens each chapter of the book.

This is definitely right up there with the best of the Dalziel and Pascoe books. Great teasing story, fine character profiles and wonderful wit. Recommended.