Dialogues of the Dead

Book excerpt: "Reginald Hill has raised the classical British mystery to new heights." -- "The New York Times Book Review Acclaimed as "the master of form and the sorcerer of style,"* the Grand Master of British psychological suspense returns to weave wordplay and murder into a lethal tapestry that only Dalziel and Pascoe can unravel. With characteristic precision, insidious wit, and unparalleled insight into the serpentine criminal mind, Hill offers readers his most diabolical surprise to date. Dialogues of the Dead "Paronomania [n. A clinical obsession with word games] In the Beginning was the Word... And the Word was Murder. A motorist dies after plunging off a bridge.... A motorcyclist is found dead after a fatal encounter with a tree. Two apparently innocuous tragedies ... until two Dialogues are submitted to a local literary competition, claiming responsibility for the deaths. But has anybody heard the Word? When a beautiful, unscrupulous journalist meets her Maker in fact, and then in fiction, as victim of The Third Dialogue, Dalziel and Pascoe take note and find themselves involved in a deadly duel of wits against an opponent known only as the Wordman: a brilliant sociopath who leaves literary clues in his wake ... and who hides in plain sight. Contestants, are you ready? Reginald Hill's books consistently combine wordplay and sleuthing, but the Master is in superb form in Dialogues of the Dead. There are enough clues to make a patchwork quilt, but in this test of wills just who is playing against whom? Is it the Wordman versus the police? Or the killer against his victims? Or is the real game between you, dear reader, and Reginald Hillhimself, at his most intriguing, most enticing, most elusive best? Just when you think you have your killer, guess again. Someone may have conceived the perfect crime. Let the games begin...