Andrew Dalziel is looking out the back window of his house late one
evening when he sees a murder committed in the house just behind. He
dashes over and arrests the man with the gun, a local builder named Swain.
His wife is dead, shot through the head; Swain claims that she was trying
to commit suicide, and that he was trying to take the gun away when she
shot herself. His story is corroborated by the other man present, a
fellow named Waterson with whom Mrs. Swain has evidently been having an
affair.

But Dalziel knows what he saw, and he’s certain that it was murder.
Others, notably the Chief Constable, are less sure–in fact, they think
he’s flat out wrong–and Dalziel had been drinking.

While Dalziel’s doggedly pursuing a murder verdict nobody else believes
in, Pascoe is dealing with a series of letters Dalziel’s been sent, from
a woman who aims to kill herself. Not immediately, but some time in the
near future. The letters are anonymous, but we know she has to be
someone we’ve met in the course of the book, so who is she?

I liked it. But if you’ve been following along for the last couple of
months, you knew that. I must say, it’s a pleasure to read somebody as
consistently good as Hill.

The constable of the little Yorkshire village of Enscombe has gone
missing. He’s been on bad terms with many of the locals, and has engaged
in a fist fight with one of them. Still, his boss wants to know where
he is if he’s alive, and where the body is buried if he’s dead. And
that’s really what the book is about–where all the bodies are buried in
Enscombe.

Rarely has a mystery writer led me on such a tortuous and delightful wild
goose chase as Hill does in this book, and seldom have I enjoyed it so
much when I could see the pattern whole. At each stage I was sure I knew
what was going on–and I never did, right up until the end.

I become more impressed with Reginald Hill with each book of his I read.
I think this one is my favorite to date.

OK, so this one was better than The Deep Blue Good-By.
There’s less random violence, and perhaps marginally less cynicism.
It’s more of a straightforward investigation, rather than a treasure
hunt. And some of the side characters are really quite amusing.

I’m still unimpressed by the god-like power of McGee’s sexual healing,
though.

Bernie Rhodenbarr books are always good for a couple hours of good, light
fun. They follow a basic formula that every book about him I’ve read so
far hasn’t deviated from at all. Bernie burgles an apartment. Someone
gets murdered. Bernie gets blamed. Bernie has to figure out who did the
murder so he doesn’t end up in prison. Bernie does and all is well. It’s
comforting. Block elaborates a little with Bernie’s friend, Carolyn, the
lesbian owner of a dog washing service just down the road from his
bookstore. And there is the woman painter, Denise, and her genius son.
And Bernie’s “cop on the take”, Ray, who’s always there to make the final
arrest after Bernie figures out who did it. This one is no different,
really. Perhaps a little more thoughtful than the others when the fence,
Abel Crowe, dies. What I haven’t quite figured out is why I like Bernie
so much. He’s a thief, for goodness sake, albeit an ethical one. He could
make a go of his bookstore if he wanted but he likes to steal. And I
like reading about him doing it. I have more on the shelf waiting for
when I need a good, light read.

This is completely silly book, as anyone who read the authors’ earlier
book Rats, Bats, and Vats would expect. It’s also a much
better book, without the rough edges that made
Rats, Bats, and Vats a bit of a slog.

Pyramid Scheme is an alien invasion novel with a difference.
As the book opens, a funny looking black pyramid crash lands in the
middle of the University of Chicago. People who go too close to it tend to
disappear. Not all of them; but a large fraction. Sometimes they come
back; but if so it’s because they are dead or dying. With each person
swallowed, the pyramid gets bigger.

And what’s inside the pyramid? The whole world of Greek myth. What’s it
doing there? Ah-ah! That would be telling.

But you can take it from me, Medea’s been getting a bum rap all these
years. And Odysseus isn’t anyone you’d want to bring home to mother.

John Thomas Stuart has a friend, and a problem. The friend, whose name
is Lummox, is an alien creature with six legs that Stuart’s
great-grandfather brought back from a trip to the stars. Lummox is about
the size of a pair of hippos, stronger than a dozen or so elephants, and
will eat anything it can find. Anything. Steel girders, high
explosives, rose bushes, you name it. Lummox can talk, but appears to be
about as smart as, say, a three year old. Do you see the problem?

And then a space ship–a very large space ship–appears in the Solar
System and announces that if they don’t get Lummox back, they’ll take
steps. Informed sources assure the powers that be that those steps are
liable to include complete planetary destruction.

What’s a young man to do?

If you’ve been following the web log for the last few months, you’ll
remember that I’ve been trying to find all of the early Heinlein novels I
hadn’t previously read. I’m not sure, but I think this is the last one.
The interesting thing is, it’s written during the period in which
Heinlein wrote all his juveniles, and it does feature a young adult hero
and heroine, but it doesn’t have the same tone as his other juveniles.
The politicking that goes on at the end has the tone of
Stranger in a Strange Land or
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; I was actually rather surprised
that it wasn’t written about ten years later.

It’s like this, see. You’re a member of an advanced race, and the
Prime Directive won’t let you use advanced weaponry on the primitive
inhabitants of the backward planets you want to exploit for raw
materials. No, you have to bargain with the primitive little creatures.
And then one of your competitors has a bright idea. They kidnap an army
from a primitive planet–the creatures call themselves “Romans”–and they
make these “Romans” fight their battles for them, using the primitive
weapons they know best. It’s been a couple of centuries, and your
competitor is now top dog. What do you do?

If you’re like the alien in this book you go back to the same planet, and
see if you can find some Romans of your own. What you end up with is an
army of English longbowmen on the way to Agincourt, and everything seems
to go amazingly well–for awhile. But Englishmen have minds of their
own, don’t you know.

This is a fun book. It isn’t Poul Anderson’s
delightful The High Crusade, but it’s fun.