The Wood Beyond by Reginald Hill

I came to this British mystery writer via television. We have been watching the Dalzeil/Pascoe A&E Television series on disk and have found them to be superior to most TV crime shows once acclimated to the Yorkshire accents. In my experience, if I like a movie I will then like the book even more. (It seldom works the other way; if I like a book, the movie is then usually a disappointment.)

Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel (prounounced Dee-ell), Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe, and Sergeant Edgar Wield are the team that solves the crimes. The each have distinct personalities and histories. Dalziel is a former rugby player, overweight, not formally educated but street smart. Pascoe is formally educated, happily married and, in this book, has a young daughter who's trying out words like "bloody!" and "fucking great, dad!" Wield is gay and living with a partner; his sexual orientation has given him a interesting perspective on the police, on suspects, and on his duties.

I found Hill's writing superior to most writers, mystery or mainstream. Three random examples:

Dalziel, in his car, is talking to Wield who stands in a pouring rain: "Dalziel...was not a man totally insensitive to the comforts of his inferiors, but the sergeant was swathed in oilskins and the Fat Man could see no reason why the torrents Niagaring around their folds should be diverted to his vehicle's upholstery."

"The nineteenth century had brought the city [of Leeds] closer [to the village of Kirkton] and the twentieth had completed the job, with tentacles of urban sprawl running out like rivulets of Vesuvian lava, threatening, touching, consuming, and finally passing on, leaving a dead and dusty landscape in their wake."

"In appearance the head teacher was far from formidable. With her flowered dresses, flattish shoes, bare legs, bobbed hair, and round, smiling, glowing, almost makeup-less face, she wouldn't have been out of place at a Betjeman tennis tourney."

The Wood Beyond is a mystery; by the end we've got three bodies, and that's not counting the 70-year-old remains that start the investigation. But it's far more than a straightforward mystery puzzle, because Peter's grandfather had been in The Great War and we read large parts of his war diary. By the time we are well into the book, we want to know about the bones animal rights activists have discovered on the grounds of a pharmaceutical research facility, why one of the activists has been apparently killed, what actually happened to Peter's grandfather in the war, and how all these threads tie together.

Because the story is more complex than many novels, mystery and otherwise, the book demands attention. Friends say they could not get through it because of the complexity and because there is a certain amount of Yorkshire dialect and locutions ("owt," "nout" "I were born...." etc.). I, however, agree with the reviewer who said, "Hill's Dalziel/Pascoe novels are enjoyable as much for their characters as for their complicated, suspenseful mystery plots."

Bitterroot

This post is for people who have never read a James Lee Burke novel and for those who have read him, but not read Bitterroot.

Bitterroot, published in 2001, is set in western Montana, in and around the Bitterroot Valley. The time is contemporary (in one plot thread, Federal agents are investigating the Oklahoma City bombing). Most of the story is narrated by Billy Bob Holland, a former Texas Ranger, a former Assistant US Attorney, and now a Texas lawyer who goes to Montana to spend time with a friend, a former Navy Seal. Complications ensue.

The friend, a widower, has a teen-age daughter who, early in the book, is raped by three bikers. The bikers are then murdered one by one. Then the story becomes complicated. There are Federal agents; bikers; militia; corporate interests polluting the river with the cyanide used in gold mining; an young Indian woman, Sue Lynn Big Medicine, with whom Billy Bob's adult son becomes involved; an alcoholic, if very successful, mystery writer and his movie-star wife; a psychopathic rodeo clown; an Italian mobster who is trying to collect $700,000 from the widow of a murdered man; the local sheriff, and more.

One of the appeals of the book is watching Burke keep all these various threads clear and seeing them cross and affect one another. Another appeal is Billy Bob, a flawed man with a past. As a Texas Ranger he and his now-dead partner murdered Mexican drug mules; justifying the violence as serving the greater good. Now Billy Bob has a guilty conscience and a ghost who will not leave him alone and to whom he talks periodically throughout the book.

Yet another appeal is Burke's descriptions of the natural world: "The clouds were mauve-colored in the west and the rain blowing in the canyon at Alberton Gorge looked like spun glass against the light. I could smell the heavy, cold odor of the Clark Fork and the wetness of the boulders in the shadows along the banks and the hay that someone was mowing in a distant field. The riparian countryside, the purple haze on the mountains, the old-growth trees that were so tall they looked as if they lived in the sky, were probably as close to Eden as modern man ever got, I thought. But this wonderful part of the world was also one that Carl Hinkel [the leader of the local militia] and his friends, if given an opportunity, would turn into a separate country surrounded by razor wire and guard towers."

Because this a popular mystery, you know the bad guys will get their comeuppance and the good guys will be rewarded, but wondering how Burke is going to tie all the threads into a satisfying knot kept me reading when I should have been doing other things. A lot of fun.