AN APPRECIATION OF
REGINALD HILL
by Walter Satterthwait
 
What makes a book "good"? For a start, obviously, it needs a well-turned plot. Mr Hill's plotting has always been exemplary. He can, and does, spin three or four disconnected threads at once, occasionally snaking them off from what is, or appears to be, the main strand of the story; and yet somehow, invariably, with a suaveness that (to another writer) can be infuriating, in the end he twists all those seemingly disparate elements into a neat and satisfying conclusion. The ending of a mystery novel, like the punch line in a joke, ought to be both surprising and inevitable; Mr Hill's endings always are. But plot is nothing, bare bones only, without the flesh of characters. Reginald Hill is a demon with characters. In contemporary crime writing, British and American, there are, in my opinion, very few more finely drawn or more fascinating characters than Andy Dalziel. Gross (in countless ways), rude, conniving, opinionated, politically incorrect and magnificently proud of it, Dalziel is the dark bloated star around whom Mr Hill's other people revolve. He is a wonderful creation; and one who stands comparison, I think, with that other famous fat man, the advisor to a young British prince. If Mr Hill had never created a single other character, he could have sat back and, with justification, congratulated himself for having created this bilious, brilliant Yorkshire cop. But of course Mr Hill didn't sit back. He also created Peter Pascoe, a younger detective with an academic background and a liberal sensibility which became the butts of Dalziel's best sneering lines; and, later, Ellie Pascoe (nee Soper), a sometimes prickly, sometimes difficult, but always intelligent liberated woman; and, more recently, Sergeant Wield, an 'ugly' homosexual police officer, sensitive, resourceful, and brave.