S01E07: Two Yorkshire policemen you should meet.
Because they're quite the team.
The author of this week’s lead essay is R. Sreeram—author of a political thriller that he thought would change his life (it did, but not as much as he thought it would), fellow lover of murder mysteries, and father to my dog-children.
While we both love detective fiction, he reads a lot more noir, hard-boiled crime, and suspense thrillers. Which is very helpful because there’s a long list of topics that he can write about more authoritatively than me.
In this, the seventh episode1 of About Murder, She Wrote, he writes about Dalziel & Pascoe, a Yorkshire detective duo created by crime writer Reginald Hill. They star in 20+ novels written between 1970 and 2009, which were also adapted into a BBC TV series. Over to Sreeram.
Dealing with Dalziel (pronounced dee-ell)
“Where’s the lot?” Dalziel asked, grabbing a random student in the hostel corridor.
“We’re having a theme party,” the boy said, torn between the average youth’s aversion to authority, and the average youth’s aversion to a Dalzielesque bollocking. Self-interest won out over principle. “Reliving the 60s!”
“Reliving the 60s?” Dalziel snorted. “Whatever for? They were sodding bad enough to begin with!”
A five-second scene, and I was intrigued by this new avatar of a British investigator - new to me, that is. Until then, my staple British detectives were a fussy-and-retired Belgian cop2, a kindly-nosy old lady and a DCI who epitomized the stiff upper lip and melo-undramatis of the classical compatriot. Dalziel was rude, blunt and borderline offensive - and more often than not, on the wrong side of that border.
The episode was an adaptation of An Advancement of Learning, the second novel penned by Reginald Hill, and incidentally the second episode in the TV series that would run on for 12 seasons with Warren Clarke as Detective Superintendent Andrew “Andy” Dalziel and Colin Buchanan as Detective Sergeant Peter Pascoe. Despite landing on the episode after it had already been on for some time, I was able to follow the plot well enough to appreciate the writing and characterization. Till date, this remains the only D&P episode I’ve watched.
To be honest, this spark of interest might have faded out soon if, the very next day, I hadn’t come across a hardbound edition of Death’s Jest-Book, the 21st book in the series, at a second-hand shop and recognized the name of Franny Roote, one of the recurring characters from the episode I had just seen. This book was set a few years after the events of Book #2, but the continuity was like a sign from above. To misquote an old saying (as Dalziel is sometimes wont to do), when the reader is ready, the book appears!
From intrigued, I was now hooked.
Over the next few years, I kept an eye out for Hill’s name on bookshelves. And a few months ago, I completed the set - which, I suppose, qualifies me to talk about the series in particular, Reginald Hill’s writing in general, and the comparison to Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse series in passing,
The Dalziel and Pascoe Equation
A few episodes ago, Gowri wrote about detectives and their sidekicks: Poirot and Hastings, Sherlock and Watson, Wolfe and Goodwin, Thanet and Lineham, Morse and Lewis… It’s a trope that many writers have used to good effect, and you can’t really blame them because it works so well for this genre.
Reginald Hill drifted away from this trapping right from the first novel. Dalziel’s first words to Pascoe are, “The first time you walked in, you said 'Good morning, Mister Dee-ELL'. First bugger that ever got my name right. First time. Unforgivable, that is. 'Smartarse', I thought. I was right.” It’s a subtle, yet unmistakable acknowledgment of Pascoe’s intelligence. An equal but for his inexperience and (at least according to Dalziel), the “mistakes of a University education.”
The two are a study in contrasts: Dalziel, obnoxious and irreverent, seemingly a semi-literate working-class lout who’s the antithesis of the English Gent; Pascoe, the educated intellectual of the 70s who should be embarrassed to be associated with the police and all that the Job entails. Even as Dalziel scoffs at Pascoe’s urbaneness, he relies on the same to get suspects to open up. For all that Pascoe deems his boss unfair and more prejudiced than a coven of evangelists, he doesn’t think twice about following his orders. There are moments when each surprises the other - Dalziel with his knowledge of the Bible, music and literature; Pascoe with his willingness to roll his sleeves up and be ruthless when needed.
They are not detective-and-sidekick, but detective-and-detective. Hill’s later novels grow more complicated and you often get multiple mysteries - some murderous, others merely felonious - within the same arc and character pool. And far more often than not, it takes both Dalziel and Pascoe to uncover individual pieces of the puzzle that collectively lead to the denouement.
The books
Hill's first book in the series, A Clubbable Woman, is relatively light. But as the series grows, so does the size of each book. The plots became more complex, at times even bordering on pretentiousness, but never (except on one occasion) leaving you feeling cheated out of fair-play. Hill invested in character arcs but these never seem forced or farcical.
In the later books, you will find one or two sub-plots that have little to do with the main plot around the murder(s), but are just as engaging and intriguing. Sometimes, these act as red herrings that need to be caught before the main plot line can be resolved.
The Rest of the Cast
In another departure from the usual trend, Hill’s D&P world was rich with memorable recurring characters. Through the books, you see Ellie Soper (later Mrs. Dalziel), DS Edgar Wield, DC Shirley Novello and Franny Roote evolve and grow, coming to terms with who they are and what they need, and defining themselves beyond their relevance to Dalziel and/or Pascoe.
There is also an LGBT arc that, despite the novels being written from 1970 onwards, shouldn’t fall afoul of the cancel culture even today, dealt with in a light-hearted manner that neither patronizes nor mocks. One of the moments I particularly enjoyed was when the ultra-cultured Pascoe realizes a queer “secret” his bull-in-a-china-shop boss had known for a long time but couldn’t care less about.
Interestingly enough, the wiki for the TV series details a lot more characters (and gives away a lot of spoilers) than I remember from the books. In a way, that should make the TV series different enough from the books to be treated on their own merit. After all, most TV adaptations suffer from the opposite issue: that the books have a lot more characters than television can give them time for.
Hill vs Dexter, Dalziel-Pascoe vs Morse-Lewis
Given that both Reginald Hill and Colin Dexter were contemporaries in time and in work, comparisons are inevitable. They were both multi-time Crime Writers’ Awards winners. They were both Yorkshiremen who had spent at least some part of their lives in Oxford. But while Hill’s works and characters have had strong Cumbrian/Yorkshire tones, Dexter’s works were unmistakably Oxfordian in setting and sentiment.
Although Dexter was the older of the two, it was Hill who started first - he had published four D&P novels by the time Dexter’s Morse #1 came out in 1975. Yet, when it came to the adaptations, Morse (1987) beat Dalziel by nearly two decades. In fact, even after Dexter-Morse’s death, the universe continued to exist with its spinoffs, Inspector Lewis and Endeavour. D&P got purged in 2017 - and if they had deviated as much from the novels as online reviews seem to suggest, it was probably for the best.
Hill’s writing style grew increasingly more literary in later years, almost to the point of self-indulgence, with obscure references, book-within-a-book devices, flashback-and-forths, even perspective shifts and looking through the murderer/peripheral characters’ eyes. In contrast, Dexter’s writing was mostly consistent, mostly over-the-shoulder narratives punctuated only by the occasional instance of classical references and near-impossible (at least for moi!) crossword puzzles. In D&P, Pascoe was the ‘show-off’ and Dalziel the ‘scoff-off’; in Morse, he’s the show-off and Lewis the back-bencher who misses far more than he learns.
Both Morse and Dalziel are single, one a bachelor for life and the other a divorcee. But where Morse often found himself falling for unavailable females, Dalziel was more fortunate in love. In a way, this was one of the rare weaknesses in Dexter’s writing - the realization that any woman Morse was interested in would be tied to the mystery in some way. Hill managed to avoid this trapping even though there are multiple stories where either Dalziel’s girlfriend or Ellie Pascoe had instrumental roles to play.
Reginald Hill also ventured beyond the D&P universe with other novels. Another of his creations, Joe Sixsmith, had a five-book run that I enjoyed quite a lot as a light read. Sixsmith is a machine-operator who turns to detecting after getting laid off. Despite a strong feeling that he’s out of his depth, he manages to stick it through. Excluding the 24 Dalziels and the 5 Joe Sixsmiths (and I can’t help wondering why the Universe denied the man a sixth Sixsmith), he authored another 25 or so novels either in his own name or under his pseudonyms Patrick Ruell, Dick Morland, and Charles Underhill. The last of these, The Woodcutter, was an easily recognizable take on The Count of Monte Cristo with a few twists and turns here and there.
The Crossover We Never Got
I wonder if anyone has ever thought of a Morse-Dalziel-Pascoe-Lewis episode. Because I am sure Dexter and Hill would have crossed paths during their time as members of the Detection Club or one of the CWA event nights.
At least one scene would have to be the four of them at a pub, with Lewis and Pascoe looking at each other and conveying their mutual sympathies - not only for the occasional unreasonableness of their bosses, but for the tabs that would be run up in their names.
I can imagine Dalziel and Morse grunting as they wait for their drinks, each as proud of their sergeants as anyone could be, but also thinking they’d rather die than admit that to anyone. Then, when the drinks finally arrive at their tables, Dalziel reaching for his, impatient but quick for a big man, while Morse, half the size and more inclined to conveying an impression of thoughtfulness over speed, waiting just that half-second longer.
And Dalziel, expounding on his policing philosophy: “I’m a cop. I don’t think. I drink.” Cheers!
Book of the Week
Murder Most Unladylike - a YA series
Enid Blyton meets Agatha Christie in this fun series that is enjoyable for anyone aged 10+. The books have the cozy vibe of Famous Five/Five Find-Outers but are also proper murder mysteries with clues, detection and a thriller element. The heroes are Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong, students at Deepdean School for Girls, who set up their own detective agency and struggle to find a case…until they do. And from then on, they can’t go on a holiday or take a train ride or get through the school year without stumbling over dead bodies! Every book is standalone but also follows the character arcs of the two girls and their friends and families, making for a very enjoyable series. It also delicately discusses issues of class and race in a way that Blyton never did.
Rating: 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Trivia of the Week
London, 1930: A group of detective story writers—the crème de la crème of their time—came together to form a secret society that had “no object except mutual assistance, entertainment, and admiration”. This was the Detection Club3 whose illustrious members included Agatha Christie, Anthony Berkeley Cox, Dorothy L. Sayers, E.C. Bentley, G.K.Chesterton, Ronald Knox, among others.
New members were received by invite only, a fairly rigorous process that required not just a proven track record of detective fiction writing but also the Club’s own criteria of likeable detective character, fair-play clueing, and interesting writing style.
Even more exciting was the Club’s initiation rituals meant to welcome new members. In 1933, Lucy Malleson (who published under the pseudonym Anthony Gilbert) received a letter from Sayers herself, inviting her to join the Club. The Guardian writes that in her memoir Three-a-Penny (on my to-read list), this is how she described the experience.
With some trepidation, she arrived at the Northumberland Avenue Hotel in London for the initiation dinner, to be swept up by “a massive and majestic lady in a black dress” – Sayers herself – and led down a hall lit only by flickering tapers. On instruction, Malleson placed her hand on a skull, which an impassive John Rhode was holding on a cushion, while the club’s president, GK Chesterton, dressed in a scarlet cloak and flanked by torchbearers, intoned commandments “in a voice that might have come from the abyss”. Malleson was to swear that her detective would make no use whatsoever of “Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of God”; that she would “conceal no vital clues from the reader”, and be sure to “honour the King’s English”. Should she fail in her solemn duty, Chesterton warned, a curse would befall her: “May other writers anticipate your plots, may total strangers sue you for libel, may your pages swarm with misprints, and your sales continually diminish!”
What the photograph above doesn’t show is that this skull, affectionately called Eric by the members, had red neon lights fitted into its eye-sockets and was, admittedly, a real spectacle. Whose was the skull? How was it procured? Nobody seems to know. Except, after recent cranial investigations showed her to be a female, she was re-christened Erica!
I should probably call this an issue but I like the idea of naming my newsletters the way TV shows are named—with series and episode numbers. So, episode it is.
The author was served a Strike One notice for describing Monsieur Poirot as fussy and Miss Marple as nosy, and has promised to toe the editorial line in future.
In case you’re wondering, the Detection Club is still going strong. 💪🏽
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Never heard of these chappies.. great addition to my GK in old age! I had a tough time collecting Rex Stout books as it is, no idea where I'll find these in case..