Award-winning author Reginald Hill returns with a stunning new novel featuring his popular Yorkshire policemen Dalziel and Pascoe.

Caught in the full blast of a huge explosion, Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel lies on a hospital bed, with only a life support system and his indomitable will between him and the Great Beyond.

His colleague, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe, is determined to bring those responsible to justice. Pascoe suspects a group called The Templars, and the deeper he digs, the more certain he is that The Templars are getting help from within the police force.

The plot is complex, the pace fast, the jokes furious, the action explosive, the characterization vivid, and the climax astounding. And above it all, like a huge dirigible threatening to break from its moorings, hovers the disembodied spirit of Andy Dalziel.

 Back to top | e-mail or print this page

“Brilliant. . . . If that Fat Man survives, it will be to face a newer, harsher world, one in which a pint and a bacon buttie aren’t enough to fend off death.” — The Globe and Mail

“Hill delivers his usual bundle of literary treats, from a single fragrant reference to Voltaire to the voluptuous visions of earthly delights Dalziel clings to as he hovers near death. Characters major and minor march boldly through the dense plot, confident of being remembered for their singular personalities and inexhaustable verbal resources, … Death Comes for the Fat Man is far more politically pointed than Hill’s usual witty intellectual puzzles. . . . It does seem, waiting for the fat man to die, as if we’ve come to the end of the civilized detective story, if not the end of the civilized world.” —The New York Times Book Review

 Back to top | e-mail or print this page

Reginald Hill has been widely published both in England and the United States. He received Britain’s most coveted mystery writers’ award, the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, as well as the Golden Dagger for his Dalziel/Pascoe series. He lives with his wife in Cumbria, England.

 Back to top | e-mail or print this page