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A Rose Cultivator as Macbethian Murderer?
Review of the Harper paperback edition (2009) of the MacMillan/HarperCollins hardcover original (1983)
Yorkshire CID Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel (pronounced "dee-ELL") and assistants Detective Inspector Peter Pascoe and Detective Sergeant Wield are set on the trail of accountant Patrick Aldermann when his boss at a home-fixtures conglomerate suspects that Aldermann's career rise is due to the number of dead bodies left in his wake. All of the previous deaths had been written off as accidents, but the trail gets increasingly long and appears to stretch all the way back to Aldermann's youth.
Aldermann himself seems the most unlikely of suspects and acts as if he is barely interested in his business career and instead obsesses over the extensive rose garden in the estate which he has inherited. His constant 'deadheading' of dying blooms though would seem to be a metaphor for trimming old growth out of the way so that youth and ambition can prevail. Will the Yorkshire CID find any actual evidence of murder though?
The side-plots involve Peter Pascoe's wife Ellie becoming friends with Daphne Aldermann, even while her husband is on the investigation of the latter's husband. The still-closeted homosexual Sergeant Wield is meanwhile distracted by the physical attractions of new police cadet Shaheed Singh, which he tries to repress by assuming a cold and unwelcoming attitude. Meanwhile a string of house burglaries in the area has the constabulary seeking for clues to break the case.
This was an earlier Dalziel & Pascoe which I backtracked to read in my current 2022 re-read mini-binge. I had skipped Deadheads originally back in the 1980s, but now I see it as a major step in author Hill's development from a more simplistic police procedural writer into a more developed author with an increased level of characterization alongside the investigative elements.
Cover image of the original MacMillan/HarperCollins hardcover edition (1983). Image sourced from Goodreads.
I backtracked to read Deadheads due to a recent discovery of my old mystery paperbacks from the 1980s in a storage locker cleanout. I had also been curious about the precedents for Mick Herron's Jackson Lamb in the Slough House espionage series in the personality of Reginald Hill's Chief Inspector Andy Dalziel, which Herron has acknowledged.
Book haul of the early Dalziel and Pascoe paperbacks, mostly from Grafton Books in the 1980s. Image sourced from Twitter.
Trivia and Link
Deadheads was adapted for television in 1997 as Episode 3 of Series 2 of the long running TV series of Dalziel and Pascoe (1996-2007). Although many of the episodes are posted on YouTube in a series here, there is no posting for Deadheads.
Review of the Harper paperback edition (2009) of the MacMillan/HarperCollins hardcover original (1983)
Don't be cheeky to the customers unless they're nicked, or you're Dalziel.. - Sergeant Wield remembers an old rule.
'You fat bastard,' she said. 'You haven't changed have you? They all said you were a nasty bit of work then, and you still are now. I'll leave you to finish this muck. Next time you take a lady out, probably in another fifty years, try to buy her a decent bottle of wine instead of five gallons of this sludge, will you? Give my regards to Yorkshire.' - a witness reacts to Superintendent Dalziel's attempts to gain background information by plying her with drink.
Yorkshire CID Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel (pronounced "dee-ELL") and assistants Detective Inspector Peter Pascoe and Detective Sergeant Wield are set on the trail of accountant Patrick Aldermann when his boss at a home-fixtures conglomerate suspects that Aldermann's career rise is due to the number of dead bodies left in his wake. All of the previous deaths had been written off as accidents, but the trail gets increasingly long and appears to stretch all the way back to Aldermann's youth.
Aldermann himself seems the most unlikely of suspects and acts as if he is barely interested in his business career and instead obsesses over the extensive rose garden in the estate which he has inherited. His constant 'deadheading' of dying blooms though would seem to be a metaphor for trimming old growth out of the way so that youth and ambition can prevail. Will the Yorkshire CID find any actual evidence of murder though?
The side-plots involve Peter Pascoe's wife Ellie becoming friends with Daphne Aldermann, even while her husband is on the investigation of the latter's husband. The still-closeted homosexual Sergeant Wield is meanwhile distracted by the physical attractions of new police cadet Shaheed Singh, which he tries to repress by assuming a cold and unwelcoming attitude. Meanwhile a string of house burglaries in the area has the constabulary seeking for clues to break the case.
This was an earlier Dalziel & Pascoe which I backtracked to read in my current 2022 re-read mini-binge. I had skipped Deadheads originally back in the 1980s, but now I see it as a major step in author Hill's development from a more simplistic police procedural writer into a more developed author with an increased level of characterization alongside the investigative elements.
Cover image of the original MacMillan/HarperCollins hardcover edition (1983). Image sourced from Goodreads.
I backtracked to read Deadheads due to a recent discovery of my old mystery paperbacks from the 1980s in a storage locker cleanout. I had also been curious about the precedents for Mick Herron's Jackson Lamb in the Slough House espionage series in the personality of Reginald Hill's Chief Inspector Andy Dalziel, which Herron has acknowledged.
Book haul of the early Dalziel and Pascoe paperbacks, mostly from Grafton Books in the 1980s. Image sourced from Twitter.
Trivia and Link
Deadheads was adapted for television in 1997 as Episode 3 of Series 2 of the long running TV series of Dalziel and Pascoe (1996-2007). Although many of the episodes are posted on YouTube in a series here, there is no posting for Deadheads.