Death's Jest Book

Reginald Hill's best-selling duo, Dalziel and Pascoe, return in this brilliant, complex and ultimately moving crime novel: 'Reginald Hill is probably the best living crime writer in the English-speaking world' -- Independent In T.L. Beddoes' play Death's Jest-Book, the dead won't lie still in the grave and the living often wish they could. And Reginald Hill's novel is much the same -- except perhaps for a few more jests. The dead-pan joker, Franny Roote, is working on his dead friend's unfinished biography of Beddoes, and with unfinished business between himself and DCI Pascoe to deal with as well. Three times Pascoe has been wrong about Roote. This time he's determined to leave no grave-stone unturned as he tries to prove that the ex-con and aspiring academic is mad, bad and dangerous to know. Meanwhile, Edgar Wield, Quixote-like, rides to the rescue of a child in danger, and finds he's got a rent-boy under his wing. In return, the boy tips him off about the heist of a pricesless treasure, and soon Wieldy's torn between protecting the boy and doing his duty.