Reginald Hill, The Wood Beyond
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For more than forty brilliant years Reginald Hill became the British male crime writer that the others pointed too for the high level of skill, consistency and dazzling experimentation which he brought to crime fiction through the Dalziel and Pascoe series. The Wood Beyond is a book with two investigations – Dalziel confronts the animal rights brigade; while Pascoe looks into family history that may undercover cowardice during the First World War. It contains an appreciation by American mystery writer Walter Satterthwait.
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Reginald Hill was a northerner and after attending Oxford where he read English he taught at a school in Essex before moving to a Further Education College in Leeds, Yorkshire. When he set out to become a crime novelist with A Clubbable Woman (1970) Hill brought an ambition to do three significant things in this and his subsequent work: to re-work Falstaff and Prince Hal in his detective duo of Dalziel and Pascoe; to open up a commentary on the state of the social affairs in the country, in particular in northern England and on the cause of feminism; and thirdly, if that were not sufficient, to devise new perimeters for the detective/crime format by drawing on broader literary devises and forms. Over the course of more than forty brilliant years Reginald Hill became the British male crime writer that the others pointed too for the high level of skill, consistency and dazzling experimentation which he brought to crime fiction.
Much has been written about Dalziel and Pascoe – what they represent and what they tell us about the changing world around us. Similarly, Pascoe’s wife Ellie tells us much about the changing role of women; while the homosexual Sergeant Wield allows us into another area of equality and changing social perceptions. The latter books in the series explore the limits of crime fiction. The BBC bought the rights to Dalziel and Pascoe and twelve series were shown between 1996 and 2007.
Plotline: ravaged wood, a man in uniform long dead – this is not a World War One battlefield, but Wanwood House, a pharmaceutical research centre. Peter Pascoe attends his grandmother’s funeral, and scattering her ashes leads him too into wartorn woods in search of his great-grandfather who fought and died in Passchendaele. Seeing the wood for the trees is the problem for Andy Dalziel when he finds himself fancying an animal rights activist, despite her possible complicity in a murderous assault and her appalling taste in whiskey.
The Wood Beyond (1996) is a favourite with many readers. It seems to give both Dalziel and Pascoe space to be almost real people. This edition of 85 signed & numbered copies has American mystery writer Walter Satterthwait with an appreciation of Reginald Hill. Walter is an award winning crime writer with some notable historical mysteries (Escapade and Masquerade) to his credit.
Henning Mankell, The Man Who Smiled
Bernard Cornwell, Sharpe’s Tiger
Rating by Eric W on Goodreads on June 7, 2012 :
Eric W on Goodreads
Reginald Hill continues to amaze me. The Wood Beyond is truly wonderful. This is startling because Hill writes thrillers under the pseudonym of Patrick Rule that are just not terribly interesting. The Wood Beyond concerns a group of animal rights activists who discover a body while on a nocturnal visit to an animal experimentation laboratory. The leader of the group, Cap Marvel, a woman to warm the heart if not the cockles of Andy Dalziel, and built with peaks resembling a famous mountain range, invites Andy over for lunch. She admires his efficient technique: “There was no impression of gluttony, no overfilling of or over-spilling from the mouth which would indeed have been difficult given the cetacean dimension of that maw, just a simple procession of food through the marble portals of his teeth, short rhythmic manducation, and a quick swallow which hardly registered on the massy column of his esophagus. The pie vanished save for the small wedge she had taken.” “He said, ‘You going to eat or just watch?’ “She began to nibble at the pastry crust, still observing with awe as he split one of the baguettes in half, expertly lined it with cheese, crisps, salad, and pickled onions, replaced the lid, and holding the esculent torpedo in both hands, raised it to his lips.”
It gets better yet. Cap goes on to decipher the origin of her nickname “Cap.” Andy explains why he doesn’t want to be informal. “Ah well, I try not to get too friendly wi’ folk I might have to bang up.” She replies, “I take it your idiom is penal rather than penile, Superintendent?”
A subplot concerns Pascoe’s grandmother’s funeral. She had always wanted her ashes buried or scattered around the military outfit her husband had belonged to when he was killed during the First World War. A chance encounter with the custodian of the regimental history reveals that his grandfather had been shot for cowardice. Pascoe digs deeper and soon many names begin to surface. All is not what it seems.
Rating by Kirkus Reviews on June 7, 2012 :
Kirkus Reviews
Two demonstrations by animal-rights protestors have already left a security officer dead when a demonstrator at ALBA Pharmaceuticals stumbles into a pit containing another corpse, this one generations old. For Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe, who’s still getting ordered around by the contrarious grandmother he’s just buried, the bones are clearly tied in to a shameful episode in his family history that his grandma has just brought out–his grandfather’s court-martial and execution for cowardice at Passchendaele in 1917. But what’s the connection between the Pascoe dirty linen and the dead man, or between the Grindal and Batty families, who combined their names in founding ALBA, and Superintendent Andy Dalziel’s unlikely romance with Amanda (“Cap”) Marvell, a self-described “born-again pagan” who’s the guiding spirit of the animal protestors? Beginning with some detective work that’s exasperatingly casual, Hill’s 14th case for Dalziel and Pascoe (Pictures of Perfection, 1994, etc.) gradually reveals its several mysteries coming together with the fatal majesty of icebergs hoving into view, till they collide in a dazzling climax. The richness, depth, and emotional impact of Hill’s multiple stories and their labyrinthine connections make such masters of plot as Martha Grimes and P.D. James seem positively niggardly.