::AMAZON REVIEWS::

British sterling
I've been working my way randomly through the terrific Dalziel and Pascoe series so this review may seem a little late and a bit redundant for this 1996 novel. Nonetheless, "The Wood Beyond" is good enough to rate continuing plaudits from generations (even) of readers.

Author Reginald Hill is as skilled as they come in creating colorful characters and intricate and multidimensional plots. "The Wood Beyond" has both in spades, but particularly a story line to rival the best of Hills' other work and far out in front of the average mystery potboiler. "The Wood Beyond" takes both Andy Dalziel and Peter Pascoe into deeply personal territory as the book examines a modern crime linked to a terrible injustice that took place before, during and after World War I. Indeed, Hill has laudably climbed on a soapbox here to once more expose in the most articulate way how senseless a slaughter that conflict it was.

"The Wood Beyond" gives the series principals Dalziel, Peter Pascoe, Ellie Pascoe, and Edgar Wield plenty of personal time while unwinding the mystery of a body found while animal rights activists are invading a medical research facility on a liberation mission. The story will eventually uncover corporate misdeeds, additional murders and mayhem and a major shock for DCI Pascoe relating to his family history.

This is one of Hill's best and mysteries don't get much better than that. Highly recommended.

Great Reading
Hill will send you to the dictionary. He will also get you to laugh out loud. This series is required reading for anyone who enjoys crime novels and really good writing. The characterizations are marvelous. The plots are intricate. The jokes are worth retelling. This was the first of the Dalziel and Pascoe mysteries that I have read. Since I have read two more and plan on trying to read them all. One can only recommend this book unreservedly.

Near perfect crime novel!
I have been reading my way through the Dalziel and Pascoe series. This is the fifteenth or so book in the series. These books are all good, but this one is as nearly perfect as a crime novel gets. In it Hill weaves two mysteries together with winding silken threads. One of the murders is in the present day, but one dates back to the time of the Great War. And as Pascoe pursues his anscestors' past, he finds that there is a lot to connect his past to the present day, and neither mystery really makes sense until the oldest one is solved first. Hill is a very talented writer, and to my mind ranks right up there with some of the present-day masters - P.D. James and Ruth Rendall. He keeps getting better and better, and his stories become more and more complex. In some respects they are ethereal, but there is always Wieldy to bring things back down to earth. No character in any book has his feet more firmly planted on the ground than Wieldy. And no character is sharper than Fat Andy Dalziel. In this book he loses his way somewhat, but he does find it again, and goes on to solve the present-day mystery. The past mystery is solved by Pascoe on his own, and what he uncovers is devastating to him. Awesome book! Awesome writer!

Fast and human
This is my first written contact with Dalziel and Pascoe of tv fame and it certainly won't be my last. When an animal rights group swarms over a scientific complex, human bones are found in a swampy area, giving the police an extra reason to probe deeply into the goings on of the pharmaceutical company who run the place. Mr.Hill is an extremely erudite writer with a splendid command of the English language..it will also help my vocabulary as I have to keep the Oxford at hand to keep up with him. This story returns frequently to the French battlefields of WW1 via the diaries of Pascoe's grandfather who was shot for desertion after a ruling by a kangaroo court, so this connection injects a very personal touch, linking Pascoe with the present case through past generations.

Killing fields, past and present
If you are already familiar with Reginald Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe series, recommending this one won't be a hard sell. If not, check it out and discover one of the contemporary masters of the crime novel.

This is an ambitious work; Hill clearly intends to transcend the police procedural genre, and includes a parallel story set in the ghastly killing fields of Passchendaele in the Great War that dovetails with the present-day murder case that is the nominal subject of the book. It must be said that the interwoven story of Pascoe's ancestor (who shares his name and is involved with ancestors of suspects in the killing that Pascoe and Dalziel are investigating), strains credulity; it's a literary construct that doesn't really come off.

But who cares? Hill as a writer is otherwise at the top of his game. It's full of witty dialogue (if only people in life -- myself included -- could set off such a string of verbal firecrackers, how much more entertaining our daily round would be!). Dalziel's Yorkshire dialect is a constant source of delight: I hope expressions like "nowt," "tha's," "lass," et al. aren't dying out. And as usual, the characters, especially the detectives and Pascoe's wife Ellie, are drawn in psychological depth.

The novel can be enjoyed as pure entertainment. But, notwithstanding the parallel story's unlikelihood, it offers a window into the ungodly horrors of trench warfare in 1917 and the savagery of military "justice" in the British army of the time.