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A review by ncrabb
A Pinch of Snuff by Reginald Hill
4.0
There are all kinds of good reasons to visit your dentist. They have skillsets and levels of expertise, and you can learn things from them that can be more than a little valuable. So it was with Detective Inspector Peter Pascoe. He’s the younger much skinnier member of the duo known as Dalziel & Pascoe. It is Peter who processes his job on a more visceral level than his older obese boss. So, when Pascoe’s dentist almost nonchalantly lets drop the fact that a private pornographic cinema operates in the posh and proper Wilson Square, Pascoe’s reaction is different from that of his older boss. Dalziel insists that the place is probably legal and urges his partner to leave it alone. But the dentist expresses his concerns to Pascoe that there may indeed be illegalities happening in the place. Based on his expertise, he believes one of the female porn stars someone savagely beats near the end of one of the films is either dead or nearly so. The dentist insists that he knows broken teeth and facial bones when he sees them, and he’s sure the scene depicts a girl with her face nearly folded in on itself so violent is the facial beating she took.
Dalziel reluctantly agrees to let Pascoe investigate the place but warns him that a live-and-let-live policy is the best approach. That all changes the day someone murders the club’s proprietor.
This is neither fast paced nor is it one of those layered thrillers with unreliable characters everywhere. It is solid British police procedural stuff, and you get a snapshot of policing 1978 style. There’s no DNA to test here, no cell phones or GPS tracking capabilities, and there’s no Internet to track the viewing habits of posh club patrons. Those used to staccato narrations with scenes that change at dizzying rates may find this series a bit slow. But it’s fascinating reading. The contrast between the somewhat more intelligent Pascoe and his bellowing lug of a boss is always there. But the story needs the bellowing lug of a boss because he has connections based on long years of old-fashioned British policing that assist him in finding answers the younger more modern Pascoe can’t get alone. Pascoe’s young wife, Ellie, is a study in the burgeoning women’s movement as it existed in the late ‘70s. She is an influential force that pulls Pascoe inexorably toward a new era of thinking while Andy Dalziel represents the old sometimes-still-reliable way of doing things. I look forward to seeing how these characters change as I move through the series, but I’m in no hurry to get through it. These books are interesting reads, but they aren’t so compelling that you feel driven to grease through them book after book back to back. I’ll definitely continue on with the series; but it will be a few months before I move on to book six.
Incidentally, in the ‘70s, pornographic films that included scenes where the star dies as a result of violence are known as Snuff films, referring presumably to the snuffing out of a life while the camera rolls.
Dalziel reluctantly agrees to let Pascoe investigate the place but warns him that a live-and-let-live policy is the best approach. That all changes the day someone murders the club’s proprietor.
This is neither fast paced nor is it one of those layered thrillers with unreliable characters everywhere. It is solid British police procedural stuff, and you get a snapshot of policing 1978 style. There’s no DNA to test here, no cell phones or GPS tracking capabilities, and there’s no Internet to track the viewing habits of posh club patrons. Those used to staccato narrations with scenes that change at dizzying rates may find this series a bit slow. But it’s fascinating reading. The contrast between the somewhat more intelligent Pascoe and his bellowing lug of a boss is always there. But the story needs the bellowing lug of a boss because he has connections based on long years of old-fashioned British policing that assist him in finding answers the younger more modern Pascoe can’t get alone. Pascoe’s young wife, Ellie, is a study in the burgeoning women’s movement as it existed in the late ‘70s. She is an influential force that pulls Pascoe inexorably toward a new era of thinking while Andy Dalziel represents the old sometimes-still-reliable way of doing things. I look forward to seeing how these characters change as I move through the series, but I’m in no hurry to get through it. These books are interesting reads, but they aren’t so compelling that you feel driven to grease through them book after book back to back. I’ll definitely continue on with the series; but it will be a few months before I move on to book six.
Incidentally, in the ‘70s, pornographic films that included scenes where the star dies as a result of violence are known as Snuff films, referring presumably to the snuffing out of a life while the camera rolls.