Reginald Hill, who has died aged 75, wrote 24 bestselling Dalziel and Pascoe novels, which were the basis of 12 successful BBC television series.
Hill called himself a crime novelist, but his work owed nothing to the hard-boiled tradition of the genre. His approach was cerebral, his plots labyrinthine, his characterisations sharply etched, and his dialogue richly laced with humour. His novels bristle with shrewd perceptions and whimsical wit.
It was this capricious streak, combined with Hill’s unflinching treatment of crime’s darker side, that marked him out as a distinctive writer.
“But to this mix of the amusing and the alarming,” noted HRF Keating, a one-time Daily Telegraph crime fiction reviewer, “he brings one of the chief gifts of the detection writer, the weaving together of an ingenious and credible plot.”
Hill introduced his two Yorkshire detectives, Supt Andrew Dalziel and Sgt Peter Pascoe, in his first novel, A Clubbable Woman (1970). More than one critic has seen in them echoes of Falstaff and Hal, while Hill himself characterised them as a subtle variation on the traditional Holmes-Watson partnership. But, as Keating noted, neither is Holmes and neither is Watson.
Instead, the two men learn from each other in a continuing clash of temperaments. “They respect each other,” observed Hill’s fellow crime writer Martin Edwards, “but have irreconcilably different outlooks.”
Hill featured them again in the follow-up, An Advancement Of Learning (1971), which drew on his own experiences as a college lecturer.
It was in this second novel that Hill began to develop the long-term relationship between his two protagonists, with Dalziel, the overweight, old-style pugnacious cutter of corners, contrasting with Pascoe, slighter of build, a sociology graduate and liberal thinker.
Hill’s structural devices included presenting parts of the story in non-chronological order, or alternating with sections from a novel supposedly written by Pascoe’s feminist wife, Ellie, who also features in the novels. With a fourth member of the cast, the gay Sgt Wield, Hill trod a fine line between modern liberal values and the earthy wit of Dalziel, who accepts the junior officer despite delivering a barrage of crude jokes.
Sometimes Hill chose one writer or one oeuvre to use as a central organising element of a given novel, so that one book was a pastiche of Jane Austen, while another featured elements of classical Greek myth.
His novella One Small Step (1990) — dedicated to “you, dear readers, without whom the writing would be in vain, and to you, still dearer purchasers, without whom the eating would be infrequent” — was set in 2010, then 20 years in the future, and found Dalziel and Pascoe investigating the first murder on the moon.
A writer of prodigious energy and output, Hill also wrote more than 30 other novels under the names Dick Morland, Patrick Ruell and Charles Underhill; many of these have since been republished under his own name.
As Reginald Hill, five of his books feature Joe Sixsmith, a black machine operator turned amiable private detective in a fictional version of Luton. Hill also wrote short stories and ghost tales.
Reginald Charles Hill was born on April 3 1936 at West Hartlepool, Co Durham, the son of a professional footballer, and brought up in Carlisle. At Stanwix primary school “I was always scribbling,” he recalled. It was from his mother, a voracious reader of Golden Age crime fiction, that Reg discovered the genre.
He passed the 11-plus and at Carlisle Grammar School excelled at English, confirming his own suspicion, held from an early age, that he would become a professional writer.
After National Service between 1955 and 1957, he went up on a scholarship to St Catherine’s College, Oxford, where he played rugby; in his first term he was in the second row with a man whose name was pronounced “Dee-ell”.
“It took me a little time to realise this chap, who I was putting my arms around in the scrum, was the same as the person listed on the team-sheet as 'Dalziel’. Later, when I was looking for a gross Northern copper, I thought how amusing it would be to call him after my rather smooth middle-class friend. Forty years later, we’re still friends.”
Having graduated in English Literature in 1960, Hill became a schoolmaster and later lectured at Doncaster College of Education before deciding to become a full-time writer in 1980.
Hill was the recipient of many awards, including Gold and Diamond Daggers from the Crime Writers’ Association. In 1995 he won the CWA’s Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement.
His last Dalziel and Pascoe novel, Midnight Fugue, appeared in 2009.
Reginald Hill was married for 51 years to Patricia Ruell, who survives him. There were no children.
Reginald Hill, born April 3 1936, died January 12 2012
It was in this second novel that Hill began to develop the long-term relationship between his two protagonists, with Dalziel, the overweight, old-style pugnacious cutter of corners, contrasting with Pascoe, slighter of build, a sociology graduate and liberal thinker.
Hill’s structural devices included presenting parts of the story in non-chronological order, or alternating with sections from a novel supposedly written by Pascoe’s feminist wife, Ellie, who also features in the novels. With a fourth member of the cast, the gay Sgt Wield, Hill trod a fine line between modern liberal values and the earthy wit of Dalziel, who accepts the junior officer despite delivering a barrage of crude jokes.
Sometimes Hill chose one writer or one oeuvre to use as a central organising element of a given novel, so that one book was a pastiche of Jane Austen, while another featured elements of classical Greek myth.
His novella One Small Step (1990) — dedicated to “you, dear readers, without whom the writing would be in vain, and to you, still dearer purchasers, without whom the eating would be infrequent” — was set in 2010, then 20 years in the future, and found Dalziel and Pascoe investigating the first murder on the moon.
A writer of prodigious energy and output, Hill also wrote more than 30 other novels under the names Dick Morland, Patrick Ruell and Charles Underhill; many of these have since been republished under his own name.
As Reginald Hill, five of his books feature Joe Sixsmith, a black machine operator turned amiable private detective in a fictional version of Luton. Hill also wrote short stories and ghost tales.
Reginald Charles Hill was born on April 3 1936 at West Hartlepool, Co Durham, the son of a professional footballer, and brought up in Carlisle. At Stanwix primary school “I was always scribbling,” he recalled. It was from his mother, a voracious reader of Golden Age crime fiction, that Reg discovered the genre.
He passed the 11-plus and at Carlisle Grammar School excelled at English, confirming his own suspicion, held from an early age, that he would become a professional writer.
After National Service between 1955 and 1957, he went up on a scholarship to St Catherine’s College, Oxford, where he played rugby; in his first term he was in the second row with a man whose name was pronounced “Dee-ell”.
“It took me a little time to realise this chap, who I was putting my arms around in the scrum, was the same as the person listed on the team-sheet as 'Dalziel’. Later, when I was looking for a gross Northern copper, I thought how amusing it would be to call him after my rather smooth middle-class friend. Forty years later, we’re still friends.”
Having graduated in English Literature in 1960, Hill became a schoolmaster and later lectured at Doncaster College of Education before deciding to become a full-time writer in 1980.
Hill was the recipient of many awards, including Gold and Diamond Daggers from the Crime Writers’ Association. In 1995 he won the CWA’s Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement.
His last Dalziel and Pascoe novel, Midnight Fugue, appeared in 2009.
Reginald Hill was married for 51 years to Patricia Ruell, who survives him. There were no children.
Reginald Hill, born April 3 1936, died January 12 2012
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