Ellie, the wife of DCI Pascoe, is almost kidnapped one afternoon, and of course everyone thinks the incident is related to Pascoe’s work, but they are baffled with respect to which criminal might be responsible. To protect her, it is arranged that Ellie will, with friends, stay at a remote cottage for a while, but that cottage is not so remote that the culprits can’t find her…. This is, I think, the 17th Dalziel and Pascoe novel and one of the best, albeit most confusing. In addition to Ellie’s predicament, we have Colombian drug lords, IRA terrorists and a tiny but fierce young policewoman, not to mention various shady intelligence organizations. How Mr. Hill pulls all of these disparate elements together is a joy to behold; recommended! ( )

Hill for me really goes over the edge in this one. He indulges a high-faulting literary yearning, I'm afraid, that unfortunately is too much for me. Too much showing off classical knowledge and not enough of the mystery/thriller for me. Add a bit of Irish plot and a pinch of a South American plot, and it's kind of a mess. Oh, and the main character is Ellie Pascoe, who is neither sympathetic nor all that interesting. ( )

Probably my least favorite Dalziel and Pascoe. Large sections of the book are the text of a novel being written by Ellie Pascoe, which I found annoying. When a kidnapping attempt is made on Peter Pascoe's wife, investigations into Pascoe's enemies turn up nothing; the key to the mystery is in Ellie's political involvements. The finale is over-the-top. ( )

One of the great joys of the Dalziel and Pascoe stories, especially the later ones, is that you never know what you are going to get. Hill jumps about - apparently at random - between serious crime stories and genre-bending pastiche, all of them a delight to the reader.

Having lulled us into a false sense of security with this book's immediate predecessor On Beulah Height, a straight and rather harrowing crime story about the disappearance of a number of young girls, Hill now leaps out from behind a tree with this high-camp pastiche of a gun-running story, featuring old-school-tie spies and Colombian and Irish terrorists who would make John Le Carré blush, and building up to a splendid grand guignol finale (in a storm on a cliff-top, no less). If Ronald Firbank had ever written a thriller, it would be like this.

For a change, Ellie Pascoe becomes the main viewpoint character, and there is an extended, and very entertaining, book-within-a-book device involving a pastiche historical novel she is writing for her own amusement. It would spoil the fun to explain what it's about, but suffice it to say that it is the story she started at the end of On Beulah Height, with the wonderful opening line "It was a dark and stormy night." Excellent fun, all round. ( )