An April Shroud
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
Superintendent Dalziel falls for the recently bereaved Mrs Fielding’s ample charms, and has to be rescued from a litter of fresh corpses by Inspector Pascoe.
Superintendent Andy Dalziel’s holiday runs into trouble when he gets marooned by flood water. Rescued and taken to nearby Lake House, he discovers all is not well: the owner has just died tragically and the family fortunes are in decline. He also finds himself drawn to attractive widow, Bonnie Fielding.
But several more deaths are to follow. And by the time Pascoe gets involved, it looks like the normally hard-headed Dalziel might have compromised himself beyond redemption.
Reviews
'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
'The finest male English contemporary crime writer' Val McDermid
'Reginald Hill's novels are really dances to the music of time, his heroes and villains interconnecting, their stories intertwining'
Ian Rankin
'One of Britain's most consistently excellent crime novelists' The Times
'These novels last, like a grand malt whisky – rounded, rich, intoxicating… Here is an author at his formidable best'
Frances Fyfield, Mail on Sunday
'So far out in front that he need not bother looking over his shoulder' Sunday Telegraph
'He is probably the best living male crime writer in the English-speaking world' Andrew Taylor, Independent
'Reginald Hill stands head and shoulders above any other writer of homebred crime fiction' Tom Hiney, Observer
About the author
Reginald Hill was brought up in Cumbria, and has returned there after many years in Yorkshire. His Dalziel and Pascoe novels are amongst the best-loved and most admired in crime fiction. They have been adapted by the BBC, won many awards and are top ten bestsellers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fans of Hill's procedurals featuring Superintendent Dalziel and Inspector Pascoe may be startled at encountering Dalziel out of character. In the first U.S. publication of a 1975 work, Dalziel is mainly on his own, during Pascoe's honeymoon, and is, if not in love, at least in lust. Stranded in the country by heavy April rains, Dalziel is rescued by an odd funeral procesion led by new widow Bonnie Fielding. Dalziel is bothered by the mourners' casual airs and even more by the sensuously ripe Bonnie. Complications arise when he discovers the strange manner in which Bonnie's husband died, the possibility of an insurance scam, the mortal fear of Bonnie's father-in-law and the realization that all the Fieldings, including Bonnie, are suspects in a possible murder. The usually gruff, if not brutish, Dalziel begins an affair with Bonnie and when two more bodies are found he launches his own discreet investigation. Hill's high standards of humor and civilized characterization are intact here, and justice and ambiguity are served in satisfactory fashion.
