Join us on FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 at 7:30pm for our final book discussion of the summer….Reginald Hill’s “On Beulah Height,” #17 in the famous Dalziel/Pascoe mysteries!
As one reviewer noted, “You can read On Beulah Height for the grim mystery tale, or for the hard-boiled cop story, or simply for the fine writing, and come away satisfied. I read it to get to know two of the most remarkable characters in contemporary crime fiction, Dalziel and Pascoe.” Hill introduced the Yorkshire detectives, Superintendent Andrew Dalziel and Sergeant Peter Pascoe, in his first novel, A Clubbable Woman (1970). He envisioned them as a “subtle variation” on that other famous detective pair, Holmes and Watson. They appear in 24 novels and a collection of short stories, as well as BBC’s popular series “Dalziel and Pascoe.”
Reginald Hill was born in 1936 and died in 2012. He went into the National Service and read English at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford before becoming a teacher. He devoted himself to writing full time in 1980. In addition to the Dalziel/Pascoe mysteries, he also wrote a series about Detective Joe Sixmith, more than 20 other novels, and works published under the pseudonyms Patrick Ruell, Dick Morland, and Charles Underhill. He was awarded the Crime Writer’s Association Cartier Diamon Dagger for Lifetime Achievement in 1995.
For Reginald Hill’s own words about the origin of Dalziel, go to: http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/feature_view.aspx?FEATURE_ID=124
Also interesting is his obituary in the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jan/13/reginald-hill and his official website which includes a Q & A: http://www.randomhouse.com/features/reghill/
This book discussion will be led by Jan Kornbluth. If you can’t attend, feel free to tell us your thoughts here on or on our Facebook page!
Thanks for all these great links, i can’t wait to explore them! And looking forward to the book discussion too!