The end of something good
Harriet Waugh
DEATH'S JEST-BOOK
by Reginald Hill HarperCollins, £10, pp. 558,
ISBN 0007123396
Two running stories are brought to a close in Death's Jest-Book. The first was introduced in the novel in which we first met Ellie, Peter Pascoe's future wife. An Advancement of Learning, published in 1971, has that great team — politically correct Sergeant Peter Pascoe and fat, slobbish, thuggish Superintendent Andy Dalziel — investigating a series of murders in the academic institution where Ellie teaches. A pattern emerges when they come across the charismatic, psychopathic. clever young student. Franny Roote. It is not entirely clear at the end how guilty Roote is of murder. He does, however, go to a secure mental hospital before transferring to prison. Those who go to prison usually come out, and Roote knows how to use the system. He makes his next appearance in Arms and the Women, published in 2000. Somebody is threatening Ellie, now Peter's wife, and Peter suspects Roote, who has left prison and is working in a hospital as a porter. When the confrontation takes place Roote wins hands down. Then in Dialogues of the Dead. Roote makes yet another appearance. He is doing a thesis on 'Revenge and retribution in English drama', while working as a gardener. His supervisor and friend. Sam Johnson, is the fourth or fifth to die when a serial killer with literary pretensions starts murdering the local inhabitants in the middle of Yorkshire.
Now, in Death's Jest-Book, Roote takes centre stage. Pascoe cannot wait to get something on him, and his suspicion turns into paranoia when Franny starts writing him chatty letters telling him how well he's doing. And he is doing well. His academic career is taking off. And Pascoe feels that Roote is doing well. People fortuitously die around him. A priceless manuscript goes missing. Roote's seemingly artless letters describing these events scream murder, theft and mayhem to an obsessive Pascoe. Pascoe feels that the letters are a form of threatening intrusion. As Pascoe's energies are thus engaged, another plot is unfurling. Death's Jest-Book carries on from the last page of Dialogues of the Dead, and is, in effect, a second volume. If you put the two together you get a manuscript of some 1,006 pages, which must, I would have thought, be the longest detective novel written.
However, Death's Jest-Book is a very odd crime novel. The only death that gets looked at in its 558 pages is part of a subplot involving a low-life criminal intrigue. Instead, the strange tale of Franny Roote is brought to a conclusion, but with none of the questions about him being answered; while the other major strand of the novel is concerned with the aftermath of the series of deaths in Dialogues of the Dead. Dialogues of the Dead is one of the best novels Reginald Hill has written, a true delight. But in case some readers have not yet read it, I won't spoil it by saying anything more about Death's Jest-Book. Read away.
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