Death's Jest-Book

by Reginald Hill

Book Overview

Bestselling and Diamond Dagger award-winning mystery writer Reginald Hill sets up a battle of wills between determined cops Andy Dalziel and DCI Peter Pascoe and an elusive and ingenious villain in a "dazzling" novel of psychological suspense (New York Times Book Review).

Three times Yorkshire policeman Peter Pascoe has wrongly accused ex-con Franny Roote of a crime, only to have Roote walk free. Now Roote...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060528060
• ISBN13: 9780060528065
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Avon Books
• Length: 545 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

An obsessively good book

"Sod thinking, try drinking!" And once you're done with the booze, try reading Death's Jest-Book, which is full of great quotes like that first one. This book makes me wish I were a man, just so I could say, "Now let's get into the car...afore my b*ll*cks drop off and crack the pavement." (I don't really wish it, of course -- it's already hard enough finding a boyfriend.) But there's more to the book than quotes about b*ll*cks; this book is about obsession. Reginald Hill takes obsession out of the hands of baby-stealing trailer women (and Calvin Klein) and gives it back to the rest of us. Maybe you're hung up on that childhood incident involving the Pillsbury Doughboy, or maybe you can't stop buying bowling trophies on EBay. Whatever it is, I'm sure you're quite normal all-in-all, and so are Hill's characters; as you read the book, you'll barely notice your concept of normality expanding like the proverbial American melting pot, welcoming loonies and non-loonies alike (no offense to Canadians). This book is also about dichotomies...academics who delight in pubescent jokes, serial killers who cry, and the grey area (well, maybe red would be a more fitting color) where police and criminals meet and mingle. I'm reading another mystery book right now (by a different author), whose characters all sound like the same person. The only thing differentiating them are their physical descriptions. Already I miss Reginald Hill -- his characters are all what you'd call, "real characters."

Well, it got *me* hooked.

Despite all the poor reviews this seems to have gotten, I must protest. This is the first Reginald Hill book I read. I picked it up in paperback at the library at the last second because it looked fun. Little did I know it would captivate me and keep me up that entire night 'til I finished it. The next day I went back to the library and checked out everything else they had by him. I loved this book, it kept me riveted, Franny Roote is such an amazing character and I hope he keeps on coming back in future books. This book was great, and it started me on the Reginald Hill/Patrick Ruell obsession of a lifetime!

A Masterpiece of Death, Beddoes and Detective Stories

I am not surprised that so many fans find this book disappointing; I must state that when I read it first, I was of the same mind. And a more mature re-reading with Dialogues of the Dead first, I changed my mind. First of all, let's take Dialogues, obviously, the two books are part of the same soil, sprouting trees at different times but close to each other, is so good, that it dazzles. Paronomania (didn't Morse talk about it in Way through the Woods?) and other word plays make the puzzle so much more an exercise in literary treasure hunt. Thomas Lovell Beddoes,how many people know of him or care (?), is the central running theme: a poet who was abnormally concerned with Death and died by committing suicide. Mr. Hill, a scholar, a writer who had matured faster than any vintage wine since his first book, A Clubbable Woman, published in 1970. A little more than thirty years, from a 'summat' nice book to a novel that defies the genre, by devious and meticulous plotting, characters that leap out and assault your senses, and use of the language that frequently sends you to the solace of consulting a dictionary, just to calm your fears. Let's see: Peter Pascoe, an ordinary, smart detective, Andrew Dalziel, God's gift to Yorkshire Police and a man who would stand up on Judgement Day with a pint of Highland Park and a fearless mind, Ellie, who by her own admission a feminist but wants her husband when her daughter is in danger, Wieldy, a gay, bike riding Sergeant who survives Dalziel's scrutiny, and Bowler, called Hat. Not to forget Rye Pomona, who mourns the death of her brother and keeps his ashes on her mantelpiece. Characters that Dickens would have been proud to have created. Situations that would have taxed Conan Doyle's fertile imagination, language that would put a red blush on the cheeks of a hard hearted lady of the night. Language? Yes, more frank than Christie would have approved of, but not gratuitous like Mr. King's. A Shakespeare of Mystery Writers? Why not? An empathy with his creations, and a gift for words that bring them to life, make the author supremely sure of his craft. Exaggerated for sure, but as near to the truth that Chandler wrote like a 'slumming angel.' In his classic but looking back, trite and self serving, A Simple Art of Murder, admittedly written in the dying year of the Second World War, he made fun of the traditional British Mystery. He scoffed at the plotting, the improbabilities, shallowness of the characters and could not define why they were so popular. Mr. Hill has taken all those weaknesses and turned them into Herculean muscles, while keeping the classic British mystery alive. Admittedly, what turned me off in the first reading, was the length. But following the Dialogues, (there was a gap of one year or so before I read the Jest-Book, originally)the two books present an uninterrupted, fascinating tome that rival any of the greatest Victorian and Edwardian British novelists. I, who frequently complain about

The best psychological mystery writer's best mystery!

Reginald Hill does an awesome job of weaving together many multicolored threads in this book. Each plotline is beautifully spun out, each character believably inhabited, as always, but "Death's Jest-Book" raises to a new level the question of who-done-what that Hill has used to tantalize readers in previous books. Be sure to read "Dialogues of the Dead" before you open this, or you'll miss half its power. "Jest-Book" and "Dialogues" are probably the best detective stories I've read in 30 years.

A Beautiful Book

an enchanting, literary, compelling, indulgent feast. I could not and did not want to put it down. I disagree with the negative comments in earlier reviews. The book is held together masterfully. Any perceived incompleteness in the plot misses the point. Life is incomplete, as the book suggests throughout; only Death is complete and the completing compliment to Life. Death's Jest-Book itself is incomplete and lacking context without first reading the pre-requisite Dialogues of the Dead. Relationships, especially the recurrent theme of Father/Son relationships - by family or by heart - are frustratingly and fractiously incomplete of the desired form. But it is this very incompleteness that is the engine to drive and motivate life forward. Death's Jest-Book is a play of bright light and dark shadows shifting within the field of uncertain, shadowy indistinctness that struggles one way, then another, with playful, intelligent humor for interpretation and resolution. We are reminded of the final Jest about taking some meaningful action to resurrect life, and that advice, finally understood, is to . . . go fetch the cow . . .