Asking for the Moon
Four Dalziel and Pascoe Mysteries
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Four novellas in the “outstanding procedural series” exploring the past—and future—of this pair of Yorkshire police detectives (Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review).
British investigators Dalziel and Pascoe have been praised as “witty, intelligent . . . two of the more interesting police detectives in modern crime fiction” (Publishers Weekly). In this collection, their Diamond Dagger Award–winning creator presents four imaginative tales featuring the duo.
The first story explores the chilling start of the Dalziel and Pascoe partnership. In another, they investigate the fate of a woman no one has seen for a year—except her brother, who claims he is being haunted by her ghost. Then the detectives keep vigil at an isolated farmhouse, waiting to see what is making things go bump in the night. Finally, we jump in time to the twenty-first century and the partners’ last case: the first man murdered on the moon.
“Reginald Hill is a mystery writer who is also a very good novelist. . . . [He] uses the police procedural format to get at something deeper than the solution of a crime. . . . Hill can capture a moment, an emotion, or a character with the stroke of a few words.” —The Washington Post Book World
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The young and cultured Peter Pascoe and the rotund, gruff Andy Dalziel have been paired to memorable effect in several outstanding crime novels (most recently, Beyond the Wood). Now, Hill's loyal readers are presented with four novellas that, in turn, introduce the pair, let each take a rare solo detecting flight and, perhaps weirdest of all, enter a space-age future for an almost absurd swansong for the mismatched twosome. Dalziel is taken hostage in the first story, "The Last National Service Man," and the young Pascoe gets to meet the tough Yorkshire copper for the first time under very strained circumstances. Ghost stories permeate the next two adventures, "Pascoe's Ghost" and "Dalziel' Ghost." In the first, Pascoe hunts in vain for a missing woman; in the next, the duo sit out a long night in a haunted house, and Dalziel, after several good-sized hits on the whisky bottle, lets slip a few secrets from his past. Finally, in "One Small Step," an older, gout-riddled Dalziel is taken aboard a space ship at the start of the 21st century, after a French astronaut trips and dies stepping onto the moon in full view of the TV cameras. As always, Hill enjoys tampering with the traditions of the genre and these four works serve less as working narratives than as welcome changes of pace that incorporate character studies, intimate and unguarded moments and flights of pure fancy.
