Customer Reviews

Dialogues of the Dead

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have long been a fan of Reginald Hill, prefering his Dalziel and Pascoe to most other things he writes. And with this book, he has truly surpassed himself.

This is the best book i have read in 2001. (it was published in march 2001 here) and i enjoyed it more than i think i have ever enjoyed anything. Hill's plotting is superb, and his characters equally sublime.

This is truly a word puzzle, he lays out the clues for you along the way, but in such a way that you dont realize youre being fed clues (and in some cases red herrings) When you get to the end, it all makes some kind of glorious sense, and you wonder how stupid you were for missing all the little hints.

This IS his best d&p. and perosnally, it is probably my favourite book ever. (i speak nay in jest). the characters in this book are superb, especially Hat Bowler and Rye Pomona. They are rather simple, (alright, only Hat is, Rye is as deep as the maraianas trench) but his simplicity is compelling. He holds some kind of innocence, a son-like quality, which just makes you care for him and want it all to work out well for the poor lad.

It was a great book, until the end. Upon which it became a SUPERB book! Hill really outdoes himself with the end (and i really really hope they didnt change it one iota in the american version, as they sometimes tend to do, because it really was a great ending). For pages he's tricking you, then suddenly you see it all. You're in shock, then he explains it, making you feel like an idiot for not spotting it sooner.

Really, you should read some of the previous d & p books, as there are some vague references to them. You can probably get by without having read them, but if you read An Advancement of Learning, it will certainly help you.

As ever, Dalziel brings forth many a chuckle. But in this book he seems to take a back seat, becomeing much more the overseer of events, taking on a somewhat god-like quality. He isnt always right there, but his prescence and influence can almost always be felt.

This is, in short, nothing less than a superb book. If you miss it, you are definitely missing out, on a great reading experience.

You dont even have to like word puzzles. Whatever sort of book you like, this is one not to miss. Under any circumstances.

and just revel in the ending

Reginald Hill is spoiling me. His Dalziel and Pascoe books have become the most consistently original mystery series being written today. In each book, he not only plays with the conventions of the detective novel, but experiments with the very nature of storytelling itself.
There are only a few times in my life that immediately upon finishing a book, I've turned to the beginning and immediately reread it, but this book definitely warranted it. The puzzles within puzzles within puzzles were brilliant.
The book begins with a librarian and his assistant reading the entries for a local writing contest. One anonymous writer's submissions claim that two recent accidental deaths were actually murders. The police are skeptical, but some a third death occurs which is undoubtably murder, and Dalziel and Pascoe know they have a serial killer at work, a killer whose obsession with word games prompts his readers to call him the Wordman.
This is more than a simple mystery novel, but a wonderful exploration of words and meaning and storytelling. Even as the characters point out how words can twist and mislead, Hill twists and misleads us in those exact ways, even until the harrowing climax, and the wrenching unexpected twist that follows, and the brilliant last line that caps everything that has gone before. Hill is a master of words, and there is not one placed wrongly in this entire elaborate puzzle of a novel.

Nobody knows if the short and crude letters to newspapers signed Jack the Ripper were really written by that maniac, but general consensus is that they were. (As were Son of Sam's) In any case that has become a tried-and-true gambit to use in mystery novels.
Here it is carried to extremes beyond belief. But that doesn't matter unless you want all your mysteries based on nits, grits, and grunting cop work. Hill has developed his own style, combining really earthy police procedural novel with airy intellectual gamesmanship. In his case it works very well (better than it did with Michael Innes, for example). The fact that taunting dialogues are not normally sent to the investigators except on a primitive level like Jack, Sam, and Zodiac, does not detract from this really intriguing story. The methodology of the mad serial killer falls into the classic ABC
format of Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen, but practically no reader will ever suss out this gimmick.

The identity of the murderer is easy enough to deduce from the plentiful clues (nicely spiced up with red-herring suspects who also fit the bill), but you will still be blown away by the epilogue, which ranks up with John Dickson Carr's "Burning Court" as a stunning ending. I hope I'm not giving too much away, but that only applies to people who haven't yet read the book but intend to.

Some reviewers on this site knock the book (as they did the last one, "Arms and the Women") for having irrelevant or distracting interpolations from the thoughts or writings of an undisclosed character, or else when the source is known, just unimportant padding. Not the case! Hill's books are getting longer and longer (aren't most mystery writers doing that these days?), but they are not padded out. EVERYTHING is relevant, which is why he is such a master.

On the other hand, many readers just don't like the style of this sort of book. The low-life Dalziel stuff is great, and the bathroom wit. But a lot of people don't want to put up with dealing in quotations from obscure poets or the use of obscure words like paronomasia. OK don't read it then. But if you want to stretch your mind a little bit beyond normal reading, then definitely books like this one have to be on your list.

Remember what a fuss was made about "Name of the Rose" many years ago? Reviewers fell over backwards saying how great it was, and the public bought that snobby attitude to the extent of making it a best-seller. But nobody had any idea what the author was talking about. What is semiotics? Nobody knows, so everybody is impressed. What is Paronomania? Not even dedicated Scrabble players know (probably I will get dumped on by fanatic Paranomaniacs on the Internet for saying this). The point is that everything is perfectly clued in this mystery, and if you miss the solution, that makes it all the better, because that's what the genre is all about.

Oh, and don't ever think that because Hill is 'academic' in his writing that nothing ever happens. There is blood and gore in plenty here.

I will not give a summary of the plot or teh characters--otehrs have done it, besides it is hard to do that without giving spoilers. What impressed me in this book (my first Reginald Hill mystery) was the following:
I rarely find mysteries, in which unexpected plot twists do not insult readers' intelligence. In most cases, the author sacrifices logic and consequential reasoning for a quick (and often disappointing) thrill. In Dialogues of the Dead Reginald Hill manages to combine both and this makes the novel definitely worth reading. Intelligent and engrossing, his novels remind me of Ruth Rendell's, only more itneresting because Rendell's books are often told from the perspective of the criminal leaving little surprise for the reader.

A new Dalziel and Pascoe novel is always a cause for celebration but "Dialogues of the Dead" is a special treat for puzzle and word-game lovers. Hill's books are celebrated for sly and clever wordplay but this novel takes it further, making a word-puzzle central to the plot.

Two accidental deaths are proved murder by "Dialogues" submitted to a local Yorkshire literary contest. The pieces contain clues, but the local police, including fat, crude, razor-sharp Supt. Andy Dalziel, and the refined and dependable Inspector Peter Pascoe, as well as several academic consultants, are baffled. Meanwhile young constable "Hat" Bowler begins to romance the attractive librarian Rye Pomona while finding numerous suspects among the sniping literati, except for one problem - they keep getting murdered.

Word mavens might follow clues to the solution, but Hill leaves the key hidden until the end. Intricately constructed, with well-drawn characters and diabolical murder scenes, this novel will dazzle puzzle fans. Those less in the know, like myself, may feel many of the sophisticated clues flying right over their heads.

Words like unique, creative, compelling, imaginative, althought highly relevant, do not do justice to this masterpiece. Hill is a master stylist, certainly one of the two or three best crime WRITERS (others: Cook, Bill James, Mike Connelly (several of his novels). And apart from the crime aspect of his novels he has something provocative to say about the human condition (e.g. Pictures, Beulah Hill). The framework of this novel, however, surpasses anything else he has written. And what he puts in the frame is a word painting of such depth, ambiguity, ingenuity that it invades the careful reader, paradoxically both subtly and also like a hammer coming down on a recalcitrant human nail. The plot starts as seeming fantasy, but gradually drapes itself in profound reality. This novel introduces a news young "copper" who nicely contrasts with Dalziel and Pascoe. Several other non-cop characters are developed with panache, but at all times come across as richly drawn, realistic characters. The ending is riveting and will make you want to go back and reread the novel, or at least large sections. This book rivals The Four Last Things as the best suspense novel I've read (over 500 novels) and surpasses the powerful Breakheart Hill and Connelly's marvelous Void Moon. I highly recommend this novel.

This is a really ingenious little book that could drive you completely mad with its literary utterances if you didn't have the fabulous Dalziel and Pascoe to break things up a bit. I can't help but secretly suspect that Reginald Hill has been holding himself in check all these years and finally couldn't help but explode in words, word games, and "dialogues" so that we might appreciate what a fabulously literary sort he is. And he clearly is. For the truly literate amongst us, this book alone will do, but I needed a thesaurus and a really good encyclopedic dictionary to get through this. And yet, this is not a complaint! It was a good read, a fabulous twisty ending, and I learned a whole big bunch from this read ("whole big bunch" is almost certainly NOT in Hill's vocabulary!). For the true Dalziel and Pascoe afficionado, I recommend going back nearly 30 years and starting their series from the beginning. Hill's writing grows with the series and the characters, but they are fun from beginning...

This one takes you on a ride that you won't soon forget. The characters are well developed, especially if you've read his other books and there is a new guy thrown into the mix who adds some youthful interest.

I think that Reginald Hill is one of the writers today whose novels are written with a wonderful attention to the nuance of the English language at its finest contemporary usage. When I started reading Mr. Hill, I had to go out and buy British English Dictionary - some of the words he uses you will not find in a dictionary of standard American usage.

The amazing thing about Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe books is that they're all the same (police procedural, recurring characters) and yet all different. The rosarian theme of "Deadheads" and its ambiguous ending is impressive. The end of "Bones and Silence" was infuriating. The end of "Pictures of Perfection" caught me off guard. And the ending of this book is stunning. Maybe I'm dense, but I did not see it coming. And despite the emphasis on word play, you don't have to be a fan of word puzzles to enjoy this book. Hill is one of the two or three best practitioners of the English police procedural, transcending the genre every time. A main character like Andy Dalziel who is both infuriating and irresistable, is a hard act to maintain and grow. I started reading this series with the very first book "A Clubable Woman" (found at a used book site) and have enjoyed seeing the characters develop and can hardly wait for the next one.

Hill has lately written novels that seem to be searching for thematic depth, but end up being pretentious and fuzzy:Beulah, Woods, Bones, Arms. The one exception is Pictures of Perfection that comes off nicely, but can not in all honesty be considered a suspense/mysery novel. Nevertheless, Dialogues shocked this reader with its depth, fantastic plot and memorable characters. The prose glistens and the mood of the book, so hard to define, subdues the sensitive reader, squeezes the heart to its ultimate breaking point and produces the best ending of any suspense novel in many a year. The darkness of the human soul comes paradoxically alive in this novel. A great read