Scan barcode
A review by ncrabb
An April Shroud by Reginald Hill
3.0
It's tough anywhere in literature to find 2 detectives more strangely paired than Andy Dalziel and Peter Pascoe. Peter Pascoe is A young well-built College graduate; Andy Dalziel Is extremely corpulent by every measure and very much aging. Pasco is generally optimistic and cheerful; Dalziel is pessimistic and grumpy, to say the least. If Dalziel solves cases at all, it is his almost-reptilian brain that gets the credit. Pascoe, on the other hand, applies real thought and deduction. Opposites they are, and yet, they work well together.
As this book opens, it's Pascoe's wedding day. The guests have gathered and presented their toasts and wished the young couple well. Dalziel is there, too. He begrudges Pascoe’s wife, Elly, and you can safely say he seems to openly dislike her. This wedding has poor Dalziel off balance. He’s going to do something unheard of after the wedding; he’s going on a bit of a vacation himself.
But his car breaks down during a nasty rainstorm, and he never quite makes it to his destination. Instead, he finds himself at a large and somewhat dilapidated house operated by a family who is utterly bizarre any way you want to measure them. As he arrives at their house hoping to obtain lodging, he realizes that one of the women is a new widow. Her husband fell from a ladder with an electric drill in his hand, and the drill was in the on position. It literally drilled holes through the man's ribs and heart as he landed on it. At least that's the story the widow tells Andy Dalziel.
The family is in the midst of setting up a medieval banquet house to pay their bills. But someone is trying to convince the insurance company to hold out on its payment. As a result, the financial status of the bizarre family is precarious at best.
To his credit, Andy Dalziel goes a long way towards solving the case. While doing so, he manages to bed the new widow. She is a large woman of approximately Andy's age.
I feel a lot of ambivalence toward this series. I keep threatening to give it up. But something keeps me coming back. I keep threatening to walk away from the books in the middle, and yet there's something that draws me to them and gives me the impetus I need to finish. I suspect the day will come when I will review book 5 in the series, but probably not for a while. These are not fast-action mysteries. They tend to be more cerebral; naturally, they are very British. But that somehow adds to their peculiar charm. Is this series worth reading? On balance, I'd say it is.
As this book opens, it's Pascoe's wedding day. The guests have gathered and presented their toasts and wished the young couple well. Dalziel is there, too. He begrudges Pascoe’s wife, Elly, and you can safely say he seems to openly dislike her. This wedding has poor Dalziel off balance. He’s going to do something unheard of after the wedding; he’s going on a bit of a vacation himself.
But his car breaks down during a nasty rainstorm, and he never quite makes it to his destination. Instead, he finds himself at a large and somewhat dilapidated house operated by a family who is utterly bizarre any way you want to measure them. As he arrives at their house hoping to obtain lodging, he realizes that one of the women is a new widow. Her husband fell from a ladder with an electric drill in his hand, and the drill was in the on position. It literally drilled holes through the man's ribs and heart as he landed on it. At least that's the story the widow tells Andy Dalziel.
The family is in the midst of setting up a medieval banquet house to pay their bills. But someone is trying to convince the insurance company to hold out on its payment. As a result, the financial status of the bizarre family is precarious at best.
To his credit, Andy Dalziel goes a long way towards solving the case. While doing so, he manages to bed the new widow. She is a large woman of approximately Andy's age.
I feel a lot of ambivalence toward this series. I keep threatening to give it up. But something keeps me coming back. I keep threatening to walk away from the books in the middle, and yet there's something that draws me to them and gives me the impetus I need to finish. I suspect the day will come when I will review book 5 in the series, but probably not for a while. These are not fast-action mysteries. They tend to be more cerebral; naturally, they are very British. But that somehow adds to their peculiar charm. Is this series worth reading? On balance, I'd say it is.