Good Morning, Midnight (Dalziel and Pascoe Series #21) by Reginald Hill

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The Barnes & Noble Review
On the surface, it was an open-and-shut case of suicide. Pal Maciver locked himself in the study, put on a recording of Schumann, opened a book of Emily Dickinson's poems, put a shotgun in his mouth, and blew off the top of his head -- just as his father had done ten years before. But as Yorkshire policemen Peter Pascoe investigates, he keeps finding puzzling anomalies.

Ten years ago, Pascoe's superior -- the hard-nosed, unforgiving, and driven Andy Dalziel -- had investigated the death of Pal's father. But, when Peter discovers an unexpected connection between Andy and Pal's stepmother, he has to wonder about the thoroughness of that investigation. As he looks for clues and examines the dark and unpleasant ties that bind the surviving members of the Maciver family, he discovers that Pal's death was intended to send a message. And that raises several new questions. What is the message? Who sent it? For whom was it intended?

As the elegant solution to this multifaceted tale unfolds, award-winning British mystery writer Reginald Hill raises deeper issues. For at the heart of the mystery is a series of emotional attachments that defy the laws of logic and common sense -- relationships ranging from platonic friendship and marriage to an unexpected affair. Sue Stone

From the Publisher

Reginald Hill brings us a brilliant new Dalziel and Pascoe novel, featuring a chilling Mid-Yorkshire mystery.

Like father like son…

But heredity seems to have gone a gene too far when Pal Maciver's suicide in a locked room exactly mirrors that of his father ten years earlier.

In each case accusing fingers point towards Pal's stepmother, the beautiful enigmatic Kay Kafka. But she turns out to have a formidable champion, Mid-Yorkshire's own super-heavyweight, Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel.

DCI Peter Pascoe, nominally in charge of the investigation, finds he is constantly body-checked by his superior as he tries to disentangle the complex relationships of the Maciver family.

At first these inquiries seem local and domestic. What really happened between Pal and his stepmother? And how has key witness and exotic hooker Dolores, Our Lady of Pain, contrived to disappear from the face of Mid-Yorkshire?

Gradually, however, it becomes clear that the fall-out from Pal's suicide spreads far beyond Yorkshire. To London, to America. Even to Iraq. But the emotional epicentre is firmly placed in mid-Yorkshire where Pascoe comes to learn that for some people the heart too is a locked room, and in there it is always midnight.


From the Hardcover edition.

Publishers Weekly

One part traditional English whodunit and one part shadowy corporate thriller, Diamond Dagger winner Hill's 21st Dalziel/Pascoe mystery (after 2003's Death's Jest-Book) weaves a complex and deeply satisfying tale. Pal Mciver is found dead, an apparent suicide, in a locked room of the old family house in Yorkshire. The circumstances mimic the suicide of his father, a former Ashur-Mac corporation executive, 10 years before. A book of Emily Dickinson poems found at the scene may hold clues to both deaths. Called in to investigate, detectives Peter Pascoe and Andy Dalziel find themselves entering an ever-widening and ever more intricate web of relationships. The particulars of some of these relationships hint at murder rather than suicide. Kay Kafka, Pal Mciver's stepmother, is particularly well drawn, a mixture of sadness, salaciousness, possible malice and cool intelligence. As the novel nimbly moves from character to character, it also calls into question the motives of Ashur-Mac, whose arms dealings ring a note of present-day relevance. Throughout, Pascoe and Dalziel are their usual witty, intelligent selves; they continue to be two of the more interesting police detectives in modern crime fiction. The descriptions of Dalziel are particularly fine: "like a shark dumped in a swimming pool, Dalziel provided a new and unignorable focus of attention." Hill has provided readers with a superior example of the mystery form-one with a deliciously cold sting in the final pages. Agent, Caradoc King at A.P. Watt. (Oct. 3) Forecast: A blurb from Ian Rankin will alert his readers. Hill should also benefit from the rising popularity of Peter Robinson's Yorkshire mysteries in the U.S. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The personal becomes geopolitical in Hill's latest Dalziel-Pascoe case, centering on what seems to be a straightforward suicide. Except that Pal Maciver Jr. blows his head off in the exact manner and ten years to the day after his father killed himself. And the old case was investigated by Yorkshire Detective Supervisor Andy Dalziel, who appears somehow smitten with the senior Pal's beautiful widow, Kay, now remarried. All of which puts Detective Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe in an awkward position, as he probes sexual shenanigans, rifts in the Maciver clan, questions about Ashur-Proffitt-Maciver (the American-based firm that bought out Maciver's company and booted Pal Sr. aside, now headed in Britain by Kay's husband, Tony Kafka) and his boss Dalziel's relationship to the beautiful woman who seems to be in the middle of it all. Hill is in splendid form here, his plot masterful, his scenario up-to-the-minute regarding world events, and his writing suspenseful, stylish, literary (it's laced with Emily Dickinson's poetry), and even philosophical. Topnotch crime fiction from a master. Hill lives in Cumbria, England. [See Mystery Prepub, LJ 6/1/04.] Michele Leber, Arlington, VA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A homicide that's meant to look like a suicide, or is it the other way around? When Detective Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe finds himself at odds with his Visigoth boss at Mid-Yorkshire CID, Chief Superintendent Andy Dalziel, as to whether Pal Maciver was slain by himself or by persons unknown, he's not comfortable about it. If Fat Andy may be mellowing, as rumor has it, his hard-pressed second in command has seen precious little evidence of a kinder, gentler boss. In the meantime, young, handsome, rich, seriously disturbed Maciver is certainly dead of a gunshot wound to the head. But why, wonders Pascoe, is Dalziel, usually the very model of galloping skepticism, so quick to dismiss foul play? "SD plus SS equals PS," he reminds Dalziel, quoting the latter's own dictum: Suspicious Death plus Surviving Spouse equals Prime Suspect. And the Surviving Spouse here is a rancorous adulteress, quite as detestable as her late husband. But there's another lady in the case-elegant, enigmatic Kate Kafka, hated stepmother of the deceased, and admired friend of Andy Dalziel. Has friendship blunted Dalziel's sleuthing instincts? And just what kind of friendship is it? As Pascoe pursues an investigation Dalziel views with jaundiced eye, there's a lot to make him nervous. Pared down and brisker than last year's behemoth Death's Jest-book, this 21st pairing of crime fiction's most entertaining odd couple is a dazzler-Hill's best in years. Agent: Caradoc King/AP Watt

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