Customer Reviews

The Price of Butcher's Meat (Dalziel and Pascoe)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I read this terrific Dalziel/Pascoe mystery a few months ago under its original British title (see above), and it is one of my favorite books in the long-running series. Reginald Hill's mysteries are consistently witty and intelligent, but in this one he introduces a new style of storytelling for his rotund Inspector Dalziel and the charming young woman who comes to his aid--emails and tape recordings. The first-person recordings are interspersed with regular third-person narrative to give us a fascinating, multimedia tale of murder and mayhem in a seaside health clinic.

If you're familiar with Andy Dalziel, you can just imagine his mood when he is sent to the hospital in Sandytown ("Home of the Healthy Holiday!") to recuperate from the injuries he received in his last adventure. He's so bored and frustrated that he actually welcomes the murder of a prominent local woman as a chance to bust out of his enforced confinement. The mystery is excellent, and the suspects are a colorful group of oddballs. But my favorite part of this book is Andy's relationship with Charlie, the clever girl who helps him solve the case. THE PRICE OF BUTCHER'S MEAT is sheer pleasure, start to finish. Highly Recommended.

The Price of Butcher's Meat is a very very good Hill tale. If you were fortunate enough to pick up A Cure for All Diseases in England a few months ago please know that it is the same story under a different USA title.

Needing to recover from "the big bang in Mill Street" that nearly killed him (see DEATH COMES FOR THE FAT MAN) and no one able or willing to take him in, Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel heeds the advice of Ellie Pascoe, wife of the Chief Inspector. He obtains a room at the Avalon in Sandytown by the sea, "the Home of the Healthy Holiday".

As he records his feelings per his therapist, Dalziel quickly realizes three families own the small resort town under the auspices of the Sandytown Development Consortium. The Parkers, Denhams and Hollises have ambitious plans for Sandytown until Lady Denham dies mysteriously. Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe leads the investigation in which Dalziel wants in if nothing else at least as a consultant; on the other hand Pascoe desperately wants to keep his sick leave pal "Fat Andy" out so he can lead the show.

This is a refreshing excellent follow-up to DEATH COMES FOR THE FAT MAN. The structure is a radical departure from the long running Dalziel-Pascoe police procedurals as it is told in six interrelated but unique volumes that make the tale more than a whodunit; the story line is a deep character study allowing insight into Dalziel via his taped observations and email sent by local Charlie Whiffle. With a nod to "Janeites" and homage to Jane Austen and her unfinished novel, Reginald Hill provides a great tale.

Harriet Klausner

I always look forward to Reginald Hill's novels but of recent years the books have entered into a level of intellectual tangle and game playing, that I am not sure who is out witting who. Certainly me, . .


Charlotte seems to be a reincarnation of Sam from "The Stranger House". Her telling of the story, and it is a telling versus being played out, becomes tedious, and as soon as I heard (I listened to the book - well as much as I could)and realized character Franny Roote was again to play a part, I was quite irritated and then sad. This character only makes fools of both Pascoe and Dalziel.

I will continue to reread his earlier novels - they are quite wonderful and will test the waters with new ones. I do admire this author very much.

Sometimes being too clever is good. Then, on the other hand, sometimes not. This latest Dalziel and Pascoe Mystery provides an example of both. It is too clever by half. To begin with, the Fat Man, Andy Dalziel, is now awake from the coma he suffered from a bomb blast in the previous novel in the series, and, although weakened and thinner, is still, at least, awake and witty. His girlfriend talks him into going to a convalescent facility in an interesting seaside town and while recovering, he finds himself in the middle of several murders, but having to take a backseat to his protégé, Peter Pascoe, because he is still on leave.

Lady Denham, who has outlived two husbands, taking over the wealth of the first and the title of the second, is found strangled and roasting on a barbeque. Between her rampant sex drive and penchant for subjugating potential heirs, there is no lack of suspects. Two additional deaths follow.

The problem with the novel is its construction. The first part is presented in the form of e-mails by a young psychology student. While observant and providing plenty of information, the pages tend to drone and drag on. These are complemented by Andy dictating his innermost thoughts and observations; also somewhat overdone. When the reader gets past these pages, one can hunker down to a traditional police procedural on a par with the best of the series.

As Yogi said, it ain't over `til it's over. And the reader is never sure that the end is near, even at the final chapter, which is introduced again by a tape recording. The 500-plus pages are a lot to slog though. But reaching the conclusion is well worth the effort. And it is good to have the Fat Man amongst the living again. [In the last entry, he dominated the book by sleeping completely through it.] Recommended.

THE PRICE OF BUTCHER'S MEAT is the 23rd installment in Reginald Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe mystery series and immediately follows up his previous entry, DEATH COMES FOR THE FAT MAN. The "fat man" of the title is Police Superintendent Andy Dalziel, who spent that entire novel in a coma as the result of a terrorist bombing attack that seriously injured him.

The current book begins with Dalziel convalescing at a spa in a small British seaside resort town known as Sandytown. His physical wounds have mostly healed, but concern still remains for the mental anguish he has experienced. While feeling like himself, he is still somewhat forgetful and even shows up at a Sandytown pub garbed in his bathrobe and wearing only one slipper. He is given a personal recorder --- that he cleverly names Mildred --- by the head of the Avalon Spa where he is recovering. The intention of the recorder is to allow Dalziel to freely capture all his thoughts in an effort to break through his short-term memory damage.

The style of THE PRICE OF BUTCHER'S MEAT is quite unique. The first 162 pages are written in either email form or as transcripts from Dalziel's recordings on Mildred. The emails are from another character, Charlotte "Charley" Heywood, sent to her sister on a mission in Africa. From these sources, we are given a view of the events happening at both the Avalon Spa and the small village of Sandytown and, as a result, receive first-hand introductions to the many characters involved as they interact with either Dalziel or Heywood.

The story jumps to straight narrative in between the email/transcript passages. The cause of this shift in style is that a murder has occurred at a barbecue celebration. The victim is the local town matron and resident rich person Lady Denham, who has made her millions as a result of her late husband's pig farm and ham industry. The irony is that her body is found shoved inside a pig roasting basket over the barbecue that everyone was eating from. Because she was in the process of reworking her last will and testament, there are several characters with good reason to want her dead --- either out of bitterness or to expedite the will payout to the beneficiaries.

Called to lead the murder investigation is Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe and his team of investigators. Pascoe reports directly to Dalziel and now must deal with him as a potential witness. Additionally, Dalziel's old habits kick in and he begins to "assist" in the investigation as well. Several witnesses give stories that don't exactly match, and the investigators seem to be running around in circles with no direct evidence of who was responsible for the murder of Lady Denham. To make things that much more interesting, a mysterious character from Dalziel and Pascoe's past, Franny Roote, is also a resident of the Avalon Spa as he is permanently paralyzed from the waist down and wheelchair bound. What makes his presence so alarming is that both Dalziel and Pascoe thought he was dead.

The murder spree continues as another body is found in addition to one of the many suspects being thrown from a cliff and left in critical condition. Pascoe and his team are at a total loss and now under the gun to find the murder(s) before more victims pile up. One of the characters likens the events that are transpiring to Agatha Christie's novel/play, THE HOLLOW --- whereby the character you dismiss from the frame because they've been caught apparently in flagrante can turn out to be the perpetrator after all. Without giving anything away, the reader will be challenged to figure out who is to blame here.

Hill's writing style always brings a refreshing new view to a genre filled with authors who continually publish fine mystery series themselves. However, there are not many who match Hill's ability to capture the interpersonal play between criminal and investigator as he has done regularly with the Dalziel and Pascoe series. At one point in the novel a character comes to the realization that death is the cure for all diseases. Funny enough, that plays into the U.K. title when it was released there earlier this year. THE PRICE OF BUTCHER'S MEAT comes from a quote within Jane Austen's SANDITON. Fans of classic British literature will enjoy this allusion, and lovers of a good mystery will be totally engaged by Hill's latest effort.

--- Reviewed by Ray Palen

Reginald Hill is one of the few writers whose books I always pre-order and wait for with great anticipation. But this one is disappointing. Its narrative relies on e-mails that are unbelievably long and electronic recordings that are uncharacteristically honest. Peter and Wieldy make appearances that are little more than tokens, and so there are almost none of those wonderful conversations among the three crime solvers.

And I hate Franny Roote. I have always hated Franny Roote. And he plays much too large a part in this novel. There are some new examples of Hill's great ability at creating delightful characters. The Parker family is a wonderful addition to his cast, especially Minnie, a precocious, observant nine-year old who, Dalziel says, will make a great cop. The most important character in the novel is a newcomer, Charlotte Heywood. who could well become the basis for a new Hill series.

What in the world has happened to Reginald Hill? Did he really write this book? I ploughed faithfully through quite a lot of it, all the while telling myself, "This is Reginald Hill. He is one of your favorites. You are supposed to LIKE this book because he wrote it. Keep reading, it will get better." It didn't. I finally got tired of prolix email drivel, inner thoughts in italics, and obnoxious/boring characters -- especially Franny Roote, who should have been killed off in the first book in which he appeared. I turned to the back of the book to find out who the murderer was, then shipped it off to the used-book shop.

Although some of the reviewers have mentioned this as an homage to Jane Austen I think that Mr. Hill has achieved something quite special. Anyone who is familiar with the fragment of Jane Austen's last novel which her heirs entitled "Sanditon" will recognize that this is Mr. Hill's own continuation of the novel. All the characters (with the exception of those created by Mr. Hill) have the names of the characters in Sandition and the whole first part of the Mr. Hill's work is a recreation of the Austen's fragment with remarkable attention to tone and detail (and yet with Mr. Hill's slant and modern touch). I think Hill has the ironic elegant humor and unpeeled eye that Austen had regarding human nature. The critics and the professors are always trying to crown the next "Austen". I don't think that title has to go to a woman. I also think that like Dorothy Sayers and P.D. James one of Hill's most potent qualities is the growth and humanity of his characters as the novels progress (yes, even Franny grows and changes). And this novel more than the ones that precede resemble the way characters in Shakespeare become self-conscious and transcend the page. Bravo, Reginald Hill...please keep writing!!

Reginald Hill can knock out a clean, taut procedural as well as anyone else. But as fans know, he can also mix and mutate the classic British cop story with any number of other literary genres in a way that no one else can. Here he cleverly blends a number of Mid-Yorkshire murders with an electronic-age take on diary and epistolary novels. Hill's not one to let his characters run in place developmentally, and here Dalziel grapples in his own inimitable fat-man fashion with aging and his own near-demise. All our favorites from M-Y squad turn up, and each gets their own turn in the investigatory spot-light; the novel also features some fabulous new civilian characters and the return of an old friend and nemesis. Everything I love about the Dalziel and Pascoe novels is here: deep characterization, deft humor, pretzel-twist plotting and such killer descriptions as:

"Around the side of the house, a motorcycle combo came laboring. The reason for the strain on its engine was not far to seek. Behind Godley on the pillion sat Charley Heywood, her arms wrapped around the healer's waist, while in the side-car, like some effigy of an oriental god paraded to bless the rice crop, rode a serious-looking Andy Dalziel."

Read and enjoy!