Customer Reviews

Under World (Dalziel and Pascoe)

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Reginald Hill is in top form in the little-reviewed and under-appreciated UNDER WORLD. Most of the action is set in and around Burrthorpe, a small mining town suffering from a siege mentality. The Dickensian citizens of Burrthorpe are battling both economic and social depression, caused by declining revenues from coal and the murder of a young girl and the suicide of her suspected killer. We know instinctively that the bodies are buried in the underworld tunnels of the coal pit. But this an alien world for all outsiders, and, if Pascoe and Dalziel go there, what are the chances they can find their way out? Meanwhile, Ellie Pascoe is at the edge of a different sort of pit herself. Her passions have been stirred by one of her students, the charismatic, devil-may-care Colin Farr. She's been tempted by his kisses, but will she sink to adultery and forever blacken her relationship with Peter and Rosie?

"Under World" is another great story from Reginald Hill, who once again gives his story's characters depth and complexity that match the book's creative story line. "Under World" is set in a small coal mining town in the north of England where the drama of the book is preceded by a series of child abductions and killings. The town has been sitting on many family secrets connected to those crimes for years when a prodigal son--a wild and violent adonis--returns after years away and brings the community's accumulated poisons to the surface. The intrepid detective team of Dalziel and Pascoe are dragged into the ensuing explosions both professionally and personally as the younger detective's academic wife becomes irrationally attracted to the prodigal.
Some of the book's action takes place underground in the mines, but this is mostly a story about what's happening below the surface of the lives of the town's population. Both contexts provide some mild claustrophobia to the reader, but just enough to make the novel interesting. An excellent read.