The Price Of Butcher's Meat (2008) - Plot & Excerpts
"If Austen Wrote E-Mail" (NYTimes review) - Reginald Hill, that most playful of genre authors, fancies himself a latter-day Jane Austen in THE PRICE OF BUTCHER’S MEAT (Harper, $26.95), an English mystery-of-manners set in Sandytown, a fictional resort on the Yorkshire coast, and satirizing inbred families obsessed with money and matrimony. Deploying a leisurely-paced epistolary style and a busy plot stuffed with dodgy inheritances, romantic mismatches and bountiful afternoon teas, Hill pulls off the clever literary jest of projecting Austen’s unfinished novel “Sanditon” into modern times. But stretched out for more than 500 pages, the whimsy wears thin, reminding us that 19th-century novelists never had to contend with the inelegant stuttering of e-mail prose. After lying in a coma for much of “Death Comes for the Fat Man,” the previous novel in this invigorating series, Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel, head of the Mid-Yorkshire constabulary, takes his first steps back to health when he goes over the wall of a fancy convalescent home and totters into a local pub. Although he’s quick to pick up on the byzantine affairs of the town’s pre-eminent families, with their grandiose visions of developing Sandytown (“Home of the Healthy Holiday”) into a tourist destination, Dalziel is too weak to get involved in the day-to-day skirmishes. Happily, the psychiatrist who runs the clinic asks him to keep “a sort of audio diary” on a digital recorder, which the garrulous detective names Mildred. Elsewhere in town, Charlotte Heywood, an engaging young lady of Janeite sensibilities, is busily sending saucy e-mail messages to her sister in Africa. Between Heywood and Dalziel, we get rather too much of the plot through inferior forms of communication. But once the first murder occurs, Hill gives the epistolary conceit a rest, slipping into the comfortable storytelling mode of the police procedural and broadening our view of the smoldering hostilities underneath the civilized social surface. Hill proves brilliant at recycling 19th-century characters and conventions — the gargoyle mistress of the manor, the feckless young heir, the penniless live-in relation, the family done out of its just inheritance — while gleefully adding macabre genre touches like a hog roast at which the pig is replaced by a dead body.
A writer who has a long series with the same characters can go several ways with it. Agatha Christie, who supposedly got to despise Poirot, still kept writing the books more or less the same, varying the plots but without much change in Poirot's character. Margaret Maron, for one example, varies her series on Judge Deborah Knott by occasionally having the Judge sent to help out in other districts, but also by tracing changes in Deborah's personal life and character. Reginald Hill, who has been writing Dalziel and Pascoe novels since 1970, has certainly tracked changes in his characters' lives and growth in their personalities, but has also kept himself interested by varying the structure of his novels. Literary references abound, as for example in Arms and the Women and Death's Jest-Book, and most recently in The Price of Butcher's Meat, which is loosely based on Jane Austen's unfinished novel Sanditon. It took me a long time to read this book, partly because of other activities, but also because it's a long book, about twice the size of the usual mystery. Points of view change throughout the book -- it opens as a modern epistolary novel, or at least we get to read emails from a young woman who is the outsider character; we also "hear" Dalziel's musings into a digital recorder provided to him during his convalescence from the events of Death Comes for the Fat Man, and then there are chapters told in more common third-person omniscient. I didn't feel that it was quite as successful as the earlier books mentioned, but even a not-as-good Reginald Hill is still pretty darn good. If fancies such as this will keep Hill writing Dalziel and Pascoe (as appears to be the case since Wikipedia lists a new book in the series for this year), I'm all for them.
What do You think about The Price Of Butcher's Meat (2008)?
To begin with, I have one confession and one warning. Reginald Hill is my absolute favourite author. I could read his shopping list and rave about it, so I have no pretence here of objectivity.Now the warning. If you have yet to read Reginald Hill’s DEATH OF DALZIEL (published in the U.S.A. under the title Death Comes for the Fat Man) then stop right now. Don’t read any further, because it is impossible to write a review of A CURE FOR ALL DISEASES without creating a spoiler for Hill’s previous Dalziel and Pascoe novel.Book Review: In the dedication of the book Reginald Hill wrote in part: To Janeites everywhere. If you’ve read Jane Austen you’ll quickly discover why. If you haven’t (like me) then it will sail over your head and it doesn’t really matter anyway. I won’t give away the reason for the dedication. It will be an extra layer for Austen fans.The story is told from the point of view of a number of characters. First and foremost is Dalziel’s conversations with “Mildred”. Charlotte’s perspective is told in the form of long, chatty (and poorly spelled) emails to her sister in Africa. Various members of the investigation team; Pascoe, Wield, Novello and Bowler also get a look-in from their perspectives.A CURE FOR ALL DISEASES also sees a shift in the dynamics of the relationship between Dalziel and Pascoe. Pascoe feels he is ready to spread his wings without Dalziel looking over his shoulder. With Pascoe in charge, Sergeant Wield is seeing a change in him. He thinks Pascoe is starting to exhibit traits that are decidedly Dalzielesque!There are some who found the emails a distraction with the poor spelling and grammar. I didn’t. I enjoyed the quirkiness of them. A CURE FOR ALL DISEASES is Reginald Hill’s twenty-third Dalziel and Pascoe novel and it is a testimony to his skill as a writer that number twenty-three is as fresh and compelling as all his others.
—Karen
As this series goes on, one finds one's allegiences shifting. Years ago, when I first started the series, Pascoe was obviously the character I related to and Dalziel the outrageous cop with very un-politically correct attitudes but a hidden intellect to solve the crimes. They worked well as a team. Now, however, I have begun to find Pascoe a bit of a bore while Dalziel has become a much more complex and interesting character. This book probably accentuates this since it places Pascoe and Dalziel at odds with each other, with Dalziel's motivation coming from a paternal friendship and Pascoe coming from more of a professional place. That said, I enjoyed the book immensely, as I do all of Hill's works. The plot is complicated, almost Christie-like, but ultimately fair and explained - although, questions of guilt and justice remain, some of which may be examined in later books if Hill continues to write.
—Bill
Most mystery series eventually get boring. The only exceptions I've found are Elizabeth George's and Reginald Hill's. I don't think Butcher's Meat is as strong as his previous book, but it's still miles ahead of most. The email/recorded voice conceit was annoying me until I realized the book is a version of Sanditon. So it's a modern epistolary novel. But the misspellings and dashes of Charley's emails were wearing, and getting such big chunks of Dalziel's voice just pointed out how unlikely it is that he would have such turns of phrases at hand when engaged in unrehearsed speech. Thankfully, sections of the book are written in your basic omniscient narrator style. It was a successful re-telling (and finishing) of an older style of story, it had Hill's characteristic humor, character nuance, and energy, but I'm looking forward to his next novel being 100% his own.Sidenote--I recently re-read An Advancement of Learning, where we first meet Franny Root, and he seemed so creepy and sociopathic. It was interesting to see how he is handled in the current novel--specifically stating that he has sociopathic tendencies but is not disconnected from human society or morals. Still a twisty little bugger, but more believable as portrayed by this vastly more experienced writer.
—Wendy
