The Estate of Reginald Hill

Can anything kill Dalziel? Even a man reputed to walk through brick walls seems to have met his match when he walks into a huge Semtex explosion. Peter Pascoe, hell-bent on vengeance, soon finds himself out of his depth in the murky waters of anti-terrorism where a vigilante group called The Templars are meting out rough justice on suspects who've managed to keep beyond the reach of the Law.

Pascoe's investigation proceeds with all the twists and turns, excitements, insights, compassion and humour that readers look for in Hill's books. But the amazing thing is that, even lying in a coma from which he's not expected to recover and drifting into out-of-body encounters with Death himself, the huge person and personality of Andy Dalziel remain indomitable.
This book is published in the USA and Canada as DEATH COMES FOR THE FAT MAN.

THE WOODCUTTER is a fast-moving psychological thriller from the award-winning author of the Dalziel and Pascoe series.
Wolf Hadda's life has been a fairytale. From humble origins as a Cumbrian woodcutter's son he has risen to become a hugely successful entrepreneur, happily married to the girl of his dreams. But a knock on the door one morning brings all this to an end. Now universally reviled, thrown into prison while protesting his innocence, abandoned by friends and family, Wolf retreats into silence. Seven years later prison psychiatrist Alva Ozigbo makes the breakthrough. Wolf begins to talk, and under her guidance he gets parole, returning to his rundown family home in rural Cumbria. But there is a mysterious period in Wolf's youth when he disappeared from home and was known to his employers as the Woodcutter. And now the Woodcutter is back, looking for the truth -- and with the truth, revenge. Can Alva intervene before his pursuit of vengeance takes him to a place from which he can never come back?

It starts with a phone call to Superintendent Dalziel from an old friend asking for help. But where it ends is a very different story.
Gina Wolfe has come to Mid-Yorkshire in search of her missing husband, believed dead. Her fiance, Commander Mick Purdy of the Met, thinks Dalziel should be able to take care of the job. What none of them realize is how events set in motion decades ago will come to a violent head on this otherwise ordinary summer's day.

A Welsh tabloid journalist senses that the story he's been chasing for years may have finally landed in his lap. A Tory MP's secretary suspects her boss's father has an unsavoury history that could taint his prime ministerial ambitions. The ruthless entrepreneur in question sends two henchmen out to make sure the past stays in the past. But the lethal pair dispatched have some awkward secrets of their own.

Four stories, two mismatched detectives trying to figure it all out, and 24 hours in which to do it: Dalziel and Pascoe are about to learn the hard way exactly just how much difference a day makes!

Pal Maciver’s suicide in a locked room exactly mirrors that of his father ten years earlier. In each case accusing fingers point towards Pal’s stepmother, the beautiful and enigmatic Kay Kafka, but she turns out to have a formidable champion: Mid-Yorkshire’s own super heavyweight, Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel. DCI Peter Pascoe, nominally in charge of the investigation, finds he is constantly body-checked by his superior as he tries to disentangle the complex relationships of the Maciver family. At first these inquiries seem local and domestic. What really happened between Pal and his stepmother? And how has key witness and exotic hooker Dolores contrived to disappear from the face of Mid-Yorkshire? It becomes clear that the fall-out from Pal’s suicide spreads far beyond Yorkshire to London, to America and even to Iraq. But the heart of the intrigue never strays too far from Mid-Yorkshire, as Pascoe discovers.

Murder by short story had seemed at first just a gruesome novelty to Dalziel and Pascoe. But the two entries in the local library’s short story competition showed disturbingly accurate recall of two recent deaths by misadventure. The deaths stop looking accidental and became increasingly violent and savage. Stories keep on coming, and the killer seems even more obsessed by words than deeds. How do you identify a serial Paronomaniac? You could read all ten definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary, but don’t read the last two pages of Reg Hill’s brilliant new novel until you have read every gripping word of the rest.

Franny Roote is working on his dead friend’s unfinished biography of the playwright T L Beddoes, author of DEATH’S JEST-BOOK, a play in which the dead won’t lie still in the grave and the living often wish they could. However, under the suspicious eye of Pascoe, Roote is revealed to be more than an aspiring academic: he is in fact an ex-con, who’s mad and dangerous to know. Meanwhile, Sgt Wield has rescued a rent boy, who in turn has tipped him off about the heist of a priceless treasure, and soon Wield is torn between protecting the boy and doing his duty. Meanwhile the tragic story of Rye Pomona, the undetected serial killer from DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD, remains unresolved. Over all this activity, rending order out of chaos, presides the brooding form of Mid Yorkshire CID's DS Andy Dalziel.

Some say that Andy Dalziel wasn't ready for God, others that God wasn't ready for Dalziel. Either way, despite his recent proximity to a terrorist blast, the Superintendent remains firmly of this world. And while Death may be the cure for all diseases, Dalziel is happy to settle for a few weeks' care under a tender nurse.
Convalescing in Sandytown, a quiet seaside resort devoted to healing, Dalziel befriends Charlotte Heywood, a fellow newcomer and psychologist, who is researching the benefits of alternative therapy. With much in common, the two soon find themselves in league when trouble comes to town.

Sandytown's principal landowners have grandiose plans for the resort - none of which they can agree on. One of them has to go, and when one of them does, in spectacularly gruesome fashion, DCI Peter Pascoe is called in to investigate - with Dalziel and Charlotte providing unwelcome support. But Pascoe finds dark forces at work in a place where medicine and holistic remedies are no match for the oldest cure of all . . .

Christian Porphyry, young, glamorous, handsome and impossibly rich, isn’t the kind of man who normally employs Joe Sixsmith. And the Royal Hoo golf course isn’t the kind of place this impoverished private investigator would generally spend his time. But when Christian employs Joe to look into a small matter of alleged cheating, Joe’s knowledge of Luton lowlife comes in unexpectedly useful.
As the hot summer wears on, Joe – and his associates, from gorgeously overweight Beryl to the tricksy Detective Superintendent Woodbine – unravel a tangled story of corruption and dodgy dealing with consequences far worse than a dubious birdie at the sixteenth hole. Joe may think he’s out of his element, but when local property mogul King Rat turns out to be involved, it’s suddenly crucial that Joe learn the rules of this game…

The hero of SINGING THE SADNESS and three other novels, Joe, whose creator describes him as ‘a black bald redundant lathe operator from Luton’, returns with his typical humour and serendipity in this new Reginald Hill novel.

Sam Flood’s journey from Australia to the Cumbrian village of Ilthwaite has one purpose – to find her grandfather, the man who impregnated her 13-year old grandmother in 1961 before she was dispatched to the brutal exile of an orphanage in Australia. Another visitor to Ilthwaite, ex-priest Miguel Ramos, also has a mission – to explore local historical records of the post-Reformation recusant and martyred catholic priests, one a distant ancestor. This new novel by one of the world’s great crime writers is a masterpiece of enthralling mystery, unravelling two separate stories of passion, rape, suicide, betrayal and murder, stories which, within the secret family networks of an enclosed community, have sinister connections.