Deadheads

Rating:
Summary: One of Hill's best books, not to mention very funny
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: One of Hill's best books, not to mention very funny
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Yikes...an oldie but goodie!
Review: 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