In the original dustsheet. Black cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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The new psychological thriller featuring Dalziel and Pascoe, the hugely popular detective duo and stars of the long-running BBC TV series, following on from the bestselling Death of Dalziel

He may have been in a coma but it would take an act of God to put Superintendent ‘Fat’ Andy Dalziel down for good. In the meantime, He’ll settle for a few weeks’ bed-rest.

Sandytown, a pleasant seaside resort devoted to healing, seems just the ticket. And when a fellow newcomer appears in the shapely form of psychologist Charlotte Heywood, Dalziel develops an unexpected passion for alternative therapy. But Sandytown’s warring landowners have grandiose plans for the resort. One of them has to go and when one of them does, in spectacularly gruesome fashion, DCI Peter Pascoe is called in to investigate – with Dalziel and Charlotte providing unwelcome support. And Pascoe soon finds dark forces at work in a place where holistic remedies are no match for the oldest cure of all…

Review: Like other reviewers, I found this hard going in places. The story is told both in Andy Dalziel’s voice (dictating his thoughts into a tape recorder: he isn’t a master of the technology) and in that of Charlotte Heywood, a young student emailing her sister (of course, she is mistress of that one: I suppose to be right up the moment she should be Facebooking or Tweeting, but that would be hard to integrate into the narrative.) There are also conventional third person sections. The book opens in one of Charlotte (“Charley’s”) emails and her contributions – lacking punctuation – apart from lots of dashes – and slopily speled – can be annoying. The lowest point for me was when I thought they were all done with, and then they started up again. Yet the technique grew on me. To my shame, I haven’t read ‘Sanditon”, the (unfinished) Jane Austen novel which inspired ‘Cure’ (set in Sandytown). I assume that story would have been told at least partially in letters, so we have here a modern version of a traditional form. I see from Wikipedia (I know, I know…) that ‘Sanditon’ concerns the development of a seaside town and that the town is constructed as much through the characters’ evocation as it is physically, so there are clear parallels. Before I’m consigned to Pseuds’ Corner, I should add that the different points of view allowed by the email/ voice recording technique allows Hill to get to places – and present facts – in a natural way that might otherwise be hard, so it is a definite addition to the crime novelist’s toolbox, not just a stylistic quirk. So, the way the story is told is potentially ‘difficult’ but has its merits. What else? The book carries the relationship between Dalziel and Pascoe quite a way forward – Pascoe is enjoying his independence, and we see how Andy reacts to that, and also how the ripples affect Wield. For long term fans this will be the most interesting aspect, perhaps, more so than the story itself which, while well plotted and satisfying, is nothing out of the ordinary (at least not compared to “The Death of Dalziel”). The reappearance of Franny Root is also welcome, and I suspect he’ll be back. In short, I think you’ll either love this book, or leave it half finished. Probably not one to start with if you haven’t read any Dalziel and Pascoe before (“Death of Dalziel” would be much better there) but hugely enjoyable if you can bear with the emails.

Reginald Hill, acclaimed English crime writer, was a native of Cumbria and a former resident of Yorkshire, the setting for his novels featuring Superintendent Andy Dalziel and DCI Peter Pascoe. Their appearances won Hill numerous awards, including a CWA Golden Dagger and the Cartier Diamond Dagger Lifetime Achievement Award. The Dalziel and Pascoe stories were also adapted into a hugely popular BBC TV series. Hill died in 2012.

Reginald Charles Hill FRSL (3 April 1936 – 12 January 2012) was an English crime writer and the winner in 1995 of the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement. He was inducted into the prestigious Detection Club in 1978.