Intellectually stimulating…..but emotionally debilitating. A grand chase to find an insane serial killer, who nevertheless appears quite normal in everyday life. I've never liked stories where the bad guy wins. ( )

Hill writes with great irony and much complication. This book is no exception. I always enjoy Daziel's rudeness and trying to wind my way through his plots. Good book. ( )

Someone is murdering people at random and then leaving a detailed “dialogue” about each murder at the local library. Dubbed “the Wordman,” this mysterious individual leads Dalziel, Pascoe and their colleagues on a chase throughout their Yorkshire patch, becoming more elusive even while leaving more and more erudite clues….This is, I think, the 18th or 19th book in the long-running Dalziel and Pascoe series, and to my mind it’s one of the best, not only because of the richness of the characters and their lives, but for the richness of the language, which Mr. Hill uses to devastating effect this time around. As it happens, this is one of the rare occasions when I figured out “who did it” well before the detectives did, which is always a satisfying extra when reading detective fiction. Recommended! ( )

Bloody magnificent - one of his best, and there's no one better. ( )

My first Dalziel and Pascoe mystery. Though this is the 19th of 24 in the series, it was pretty easy to pick up the rough shape of the backstory. The series of murders in the book stretches our credulity nearly to the breaking point, but not quite. Hill seems to like to play--while he doesn't turn his back on reality or realism, there is a sense in which he recognizes the novel as a sort of game and in which he asks us to realize this as well. In spite of having lived with this series for a very long time (more than 30 years at the time this one was published), Hill seems genuinely fond of the characters he has created, and they are quite likable. I can't say I'll read them all, but I will certainly be looking for some of the high points in this long series for later enjoyment. ( )