Bones and Silence -- Reginald Hill

I still don't know how I lived with Collomia for as long as I did without reading any of the Reginald Hill mysteries. As I read it, I kicked myself for waiting until now--but now that I've had a little more time to reflect, I'm happy that I still have 20 of them left.

I realize that this book is pretty late in the Dalziel and Pascoe series, but it was the earliest one that I happened to have at home (pub. date 1990--the series started in 1970), so I read it anyway. Phew. If they're all like this one, it really is a wonderful set of books. (Not that I ever doubted you, Collomia).

It was just a joy to read:

The tenant of Badger Farm turned out to be as stingy with words as he was with fuel till Dalziel's threat of RSPCA and Environmental Health inspectors touched a lingual nerve. Then he recalled noting Bluebell's arrival some four weeks earlier. He kept a close eye on it for a while, suspicious that it should remain so long in such an unattractive mooring. But once assured that its sole occupants were a man and a woman with no kids, no dogs, and no desire to trespass on his land and bother him for milk, eggs, or fresh water, he'd lost interest. He was a man of no curiousity and less sympathy. He remarked that he'd spotted the man wading around in the canal a couple of times with what he assumed was a fishing rod. "Though what the stupid sod was looking to catch, God alone knows. There've been no fish in that cut since the First War."

"You likely pointed this out" said Dalziel.

"Nay! Let folk find out their own errors, that's my way."

It seemed a not unattractive philosophy, so Dalziel did not tell the farmer that he'd set the RSPCA and Environmental Health people on to him anyway.

Reginald Hill isn't one of the annoying authors that re-introduces everybody at the beginning of every book--it took a little while to catch up, but I eventually had everyone straight. I did, however, go ahead and order the first book in the series, A Clubbable Woman, over Alibris--it seems to be out of print, in the States, at least. It will be a lot of fun to read them all in order--if I can handle the waiting. I hate waiting.