'One of Britain's most consistently excellent crime novelists' The Times '[Reginald Hill] keeps one on the edge of one's wits throughout a bitterly enthralling detection thriller' Sunday Times Where better for a hitman to retire than in the Lake District, where the air is healthy and the scenery spectacular? And when Jaymith meets attractive young widow, Anya Wilson, he can't believe his luck. But Jaysmith soon discovers that settling down to the quiet life is not as easy as it seems. His old employers aren't keen to lose him, his past is always lying in wait, and when Anya introduces him to her family, Jaysmith realizes there's no way out. He's back in business, and it makes little difference that this time it's to defend, not destroy. However you wrap it up, his one accessible talent is the Long Kill.

'Few writers in the genre today have Hill's gifts: formidable intelligence, quick humour, compassion and a prose style that blends elegance and grace' Donna Leon, Sunday Times Hurrying out of St Monkey's church one day, Joe Sixsmith stumbles across a boy's corpse in a cardboard box and into more trouble than he's ever known. His casebook is full to bursting: retired colonial Mrs C. demands to know how the boy got there; Gallie, the Mutant from Outer Space, urges him to find the stranger nosing into her granddad's past; while Butcher, that briefest of briefs, is hellbent on digging the dirt on a deputy head's out-of-school activities. Joe threads his way through the mean streets of Luton, fighting off cops, druggies and the matchmaking machinations of his Auntie Mirabelle. But there's little joy to be found in the truth: that kids grow up fast, and that even the luckiest ones are born guilty.

'Humour and topicality along a cold enigmatic trail of murder' Observer Life is on the up for Patrick Aldermann: his Great Aunt Florence has collapsed into her rose bed leaving him Rosemont House with its splendid gardens. But when his boss, 'Dandy' Dick Elgood, suggests to Peter Pascoe that Aldermann is a murderer – then later retracts the accusation – the detective inspector is left with a thorny problem. Not only have the police already dug up some interesting information about Aldermann's beautiful wife; it also appears that his rapid promotion has been helped by the convenient deaths of some of his colleagues...

Another excellent Dalziel and Pascoe story from the master of the British crime novel Three old men die on a stormy November night: one by deliberate violence, one in a road accident and one by an unknown cause. Inspector Pascoe is called in to investigate the first death, but when the dying words of the accident victim suggest that a drunken Superintendent Dalziel had been behind the wheel, the integrity of the entire Mid-Yorkshire constabulary is called into question. Helped by the bright but wayward DC Seymour, hindered by 'Maggie's Moron', the half-witted Constable Hector, Peter Pascoe enters the twilight and vulnerable world of the senior citizen – to discover that the beckoning darkness at the end of the tunnel holds few comforts.

'Altogether an enjoyable performance, one of Mr Hill's best' Financial Times When Mary Dinwoodie is found choked in a ditch following a night out with her boyfriend, a mysterious caller phones the local paper with a quotation from Hamlet. The career of the Yorkshire Choker is underway. If Superintendent Dalziel is unimpressed by the literary phone calls, he is downright angry when Sergeant Wield calls in a clairvoyant. Linguists, psychiatrists, mediums – it's all a load of nonsense as far as he is concerned, designed to make a fool of him. And meanwhile the Choker strikes again – and again...

From Library JournalAs Inspector Dalziel and partner Pascoe work unofficially to refute new evidence concerning a 1963 case, they threaten to unearth various nasty political secrets. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/92.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsWhen new evidence in a 1963 murder case leads to a new trial for nanny Cissy Kohler, who's been serving a life sentence for killing her employer's wife Pam Westropp, peerlessly curmudgeonly Mid-Yorkshire Chief Supt. Andrew Dalziel drags D.C.I. Peter Pascoe into the reopened investigation, trying to defend the judgment of Dalziel's mentor Inspector Walter Tallantire, who made the arrest, against the insinuations of South Thames investigating chief Geoffrey Hiller. The case groans under the eminence of the politicos and royal connections involved and the weight of its staggering complexities--did Sir Ralph Mickledore, who was executed for the murder, pull the trigger at the instigation of Cissy? why did Cissy, who never denied her guilt, suddenly seek parole 13 years after her conviction and just as suddenly abandon it? why is the witness whose long-suppressed testimony abruptly freed Cissy found dead?--but the salt-and-pepper inquiries of Dalziel and Pascoe, especially a flying trip that leads to the tabloid headline CROCODILE DALZIEL,'' are pure pleasure. Not quite the equal of the sterling Bones and Silence (1990), but several lengths ahead of the current competition. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

'So far out in front that he need not bother looking over his shoulder' Sunday Telegraph The balding policeman on Trudi Adamson's doorstep brings the worst news possible: her husband Trent has been burned to death in a freak car accident. Suddenly a widow after years of marriage, Trudi soon discovers there's a lot she didn't know about her late husband. Why did he resign from his job without telling her? And where is all his money? As shock piles upon shock, Trudi is forced to re-examine her belief in Trent, and ultimately in herself. Compelled to leave the cosy nest of her old life, she is out in the open and fighting for her survival.

'Hill is an instinctive and complete novelist who is blessed with a spontaneous storytelling gift' Frances Fyfield, Mail on Sunday Years ago, young Tracey Pedley disappeared in the woods around Burrthorpe. The close-knit mining village had its own ideas about what happened, but the police pinned it on a known child-killer who subsequently committed suicide. Now Burrthorpe comes to police attention again. A man's body is discovered down a mine shaft and it's clear he has been murdered. Dalziel and Pascoe's investigation takes them to the heart of a frightened and hostile community. But could the key to the present-day investigation lie in the past when little Tracey vanished into thin air...?

'Hill's wit is the constant, ironic foil to his vision, and to call this a mere crime novel is to say Everest is a nice little hill' Frances Hegarty, Mail on Sunday When animal-rights activists uncover a long-dead uniformed body in the grounds of Wanwood House, a research facility, Dalziel is presented with a seemingly insoluble mystery. And he is further perplexed when he's attracted to one of the campaigners – now implicated in a murderous assault. Meanwhile, the death of his grandmother has led Peter Pascoe to the battlefields of World War 1 and the enigma of who his grandfather was – and why he had to die.