Rating: 
Summary: Hill just keeps getting better and better
Review: Detective Constable Bowler, who, in a fit of paranomasia (wordplay, punning) has been nicknamed, "Hat," would like to date Ray (Raina) Pamona, the local reference librarian. She and her boss, Dee, have been assigned the onerous task of judging submissions to the local fiction story contest. Dee and Ray notice that two of the entries from the same writer bear striking resemblance to two recent unexplained deaths, and they wonder how the writer could have obtained such intimate details. They turn the stories over to Hat. Enter Superintendent Dalziel (pronounced "Dee-?l" ) and DCI Pascoe. Dalziel is his usual fat, curmudgeonly self who mutters things like, " 'Don't want them blowflies from the media around till we know there's dead meat and it's not us,' " and " 'One thing you've got to say about George [another inspector], he's been real conscientious helping to break in his replacement. ' 'Thought we weren't getting a replacement, sir' [said Sergeant Wield]. 'That's what I mean,' " replied Dalziel. Andy Dalziel loves hiding his rapier-sharp mind behind crude talk and behavior, and he loves to deflate pompous egos, pretending to misunderstand their pedantries. When one expert adviser presents what he calls an "interesting" theory, Dalziel responds, "If you're waiting for a bus and a giraffe walks down the street, that's interesting. But it doesn't get you anywhere."
DCI Peter Pascoe remains the perfect foil. Well-educated and refined, he's conscientious to a fault and impeccably polite even if he does have a snit on about an ex-convict he thinks might be the killer. The detectives are soon in the midst of numerous investigations, as the "Wordman" so-named embarks on a killing spree, tantilizing the public and police by sending literate descriptive passages describing how the murders were accomplished. All of Hill's books revel in paranomania ( a clinical obsession with word games), but in this one he has outdone himself. Virtually every page has some kind of pun, and it turns out the murderer was using the beginning and ending word entries of volumes of the OED to define his/her (believe me, you'll thank me for not revealing the gender of the murderer) next victim. Hill is so erudite it can take your breath away, and how he can come up with phrases like the following defy my imagination: ... The ending will astonish and surprise you.
Rating:
Summary: A review of the entire series
Review: Dialogues of the Dead was the first book I read from Hill's in the Dalzeel/Pascoe (D/P)series. I loved it and was hooked. A clever mystery with unexpected twists, the novel looks into the investogation of a serial killer byu the Yorkshire police department. The main character here is a younger officer, nicknamed Hat, with the unforgetable D/P couple serving as secondary characters. In this respect the book is not very representative of the other novels in the series, which dwell to a large extent to Danzeel and Pascoe. What makes the series unique and likable is that gradually, novel after novel, Hill is building up an entire world surrounding the two policemen. In different novels, we get to know their families, friends and enemies and once developed neither of these characters looses his/her depth or complexity. The ending of Dialogues of the Dead leaves the door open for another Hat story. But then again, Hill had a similar approach in his novel Deadheads , and never resolved the situation in another mystery (to the best of my knowledge--I have not read all of the novels). Too bad that some of the D/P mysteries are already out of print!
Rating:
Summary: dialogues of the dead
Review: 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
Rating: 
Summary: Hit from Hill; Again!
Review: Mr. Hill continues to write prolifically but the quality of his writing and the puzzles in his mystery march forward unabatedly.
This book (and don't forget Death's Jest Book, published late last year in England, which is a follow up to this one) lifts the modern mystery to new heights. Why am I not giving it a five star? Just because it is too long, and some of it unnecessarily.
Especially the love scene details of Rye Pomona and Hat.
Still a far cry from and one of greater satisfaction than reading the pseudo British trash from Elizabeth George.
Dalziel remains the greates of modern detectives. He surpassed Inspector Morse many a moon ago.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible, powerful crime fiction
Review: Mysteries are mysteries except when written by Hill. His novels are wonderfully written works of fiction that use the murder mystery genre merely as the tread. It is the "getting there" that he masters so well. It was great to see the characters from his previous book, 'Death's Jest-Book' show up again in this novel - part two of the story... but 'Death's Jest-Book' is the one to own.
Rating:
Summary: Clever, clever, clever
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Clever, clever, clever
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Another great offering from Reginald Hill
Review: 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...
Rating:
Summary: a good one
Review: This is my first Reginald Hill book and I agree with most of what previous reviewers have said about it. It's clever and funny. The Dalziel character was a rare treat. (He doesn't seem as funny on TV.) I thought the ending was great. I didn't figure it out ahead, so I'll probably read this again sometime and see what I missed.
I was struck by something in the chapters that dealt with the relationship between Rye & Hat. Their dialog had exactly the same tone as that of Jan and Franklin in Richard Power's The Goldbug Variations.
I'll definitely be reading more of Hill's stuff.
Rating: 
Summary: Let down
Review: This is the first Reginald Hill book I read. I liked the book just fine and particularly liked the romance between Rye Pomona and D.C. Bowler. I liked the characters of the others also. I skipped a lot as it seemed to be wordy. The reason I give this one star is I felt the author did not play fair with the reader. I do not expect to invest my emotions in characters to be whacked at the end with no warning. I will not read any other books by this author.
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