Reginald Charles Hill

FRSL The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820 by George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the ...

(3 April 193612 January 2012) was an English crime writer and the winner in 1995 of the

Crime Writers' Association The Crime Writers' Association (CWA) is a specialist authors' organisation in the United Kingdom, most notable for its "Dagger" awards for the best crime writing of the year, and the Diamond Dagger awarded to an author for lifetime achievement. ...

Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement. He was inducted into the prestigious

Detection Club The Detection Club was formed in 1930 by a group of British mystery writers, including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ronald Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts, Arthur Morrison, Hugh Walpole, John Rhode, Jessie Louisa Rickard, Baroness Orczy, ...

in 1978.

Biography

Hill was born to a "very ordinary" family. His father, Reg Hill, was a professional footballer. His mother was a fan of

Golden Age The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the ''Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages of Man, Ages, Gold being the first and the one during wh ...

crime writers, and he discovered the genre while fetching her library books. He passed the

eleven plus exam The eleven-plus (11+) is a standardised examination administered to some students in England and Northern Ireland in their last year of primary education, which governs admission to grammar schools and other secondary schools which use academ ...

and attended Carlisle Grammar School where he excelled in English. After

National Service National service is a system of compulsory or voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act ...

(1955–57) and studying English at

St Catherine's College, Oxford St Catherine's College (colloquially called St Catz or Catz) is one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent colleges of the University of Oxford. In 1974, it was also one of the first men's colleges to admit women. It has 528 un ...

(1957–60), he worked as a teacher for many years, becoming a senior lecturer at Doncaster College of Education. In 1980 he retired from salaried work to devote himself full-time to writing. Hill is best known for his more than 20 novels featuring the

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ) is an area of Northern England which was History of Yorkshire, historically a county. Despite no longer being used for administration, Yorkshire retains a strong regional identity. The county was named after its county town, the ...

detectives Andrew Dalziel, Peter Pascoe and Edgar Wield. The characters were used by the BBC in the '' Dalziel and Pascoe'' series, in which Dalziel was played by Warren Clarke, Pascoe by Colin Buchanan, and Wield by David Royle. He also wrote more than 30 other novels, including five featuring Joe Sixsmith, a black machine operator turned private detective in a fictional

Luton Luton () is a town and borough in Bedfordshire, England. The borough had a population of 225,262 at the 2021 census. Luton is on the River Lea, about north-west of London. The town's foundation dates to the sixth century as a Saxon settleme ...

. Novels originally published under the pseudonyms of Patrick Ruell, Dick Morland, and Charles Underhill have now appeared under his own name. Hill was also a writer of short stories and ghost tales. Hill's novels employ various structural devices, such as presenting parts of the story in non-chronological order or alternating with sections from a novel supposedly written by Peter's wife, Ellie Pascoe (née Soper). He also frequently selected one writer or one work of art to use as a central organizing element of a given novel, such as one novel being a pastiche of Jane Austen's works, or another featuring elements of classical Greek myth. The novella ''One Small Step'' (dedicated to "you, dear readers, without whom the writing would be in vain, and to you, still dearer purchasers, without whom the eating would be infrequent") is set in the future, and deals with the EuroFed Police Commissioner Pascoe and retired Dalziel investigating the first murder on the moon. The duo do not always "get their man", with at least one novel ending with the villain getting away and another strongly implying that while Dalziel and Pascoe are unable to convict anyone, a series of unrelated accidents actually included at least one unprovable instance of murder. Hill commented in 1986:

I still recall with delight as a teen-ager making the earth-shaking discovery that many of the great "serious novelists," classical and modern, were as entertaining and interesting as the crime-writers I already loved. But it took another decade of maturation to reverse the equation and understand that many of the crime writers I had decided to grow out of were still as interesting and entertaining as the "serious novelists" I now revered.

Hill died at his home in Ravenglass, Cumbria, on 12 January 2012 after suffering a brain tumour.

Bibliography

Dalziel and Pascoe

#'' A Clubbable Woman'' (1970) #'' An Advancement of Learning'' (1971) #'' Ruling Passion'' (1973) #'' An April Shroud'' (1975) #'' A Pinch of Snuff'' (1978) #'' A Killing Kindness'' (1980) #''Deadheads'' (1983) #''Exit Lines'' (1984) #''Child's Play'' (1987) #''Underworld'' (1988) #'' Bones and Silence'' (1990) #''One Small Step'' (1990), novella #'' Recalled to Life'' (1992) #'' Pictures of Perfection'' (1994) #''The Wood Beyond'' (1995) #''Asking for the Moon'' (1996), short stories #*"The Last National Service Man" #*"Pascoe's Ghost" #*"Dalziel's Ghost" #*"One Small Step" #''On Beulah Height'' (1998) #''Arms and the Women'' (1999) #''Dialogues of the Dead'' (2002) #''Death's Jest-Book'' (2003) #'' Good Morning, Midnight'' (2004) #''The Death of Dalziel'' (2007), Canada and US Title: ''Death Comes for the Fat Man'' #''A Cure for All Diseases'' (Canada and US title: ''The Price of Butcher's Meat'') (2008) Shortlisted for Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award 2009. #''Midnight Fugue'' (2009)

Joe Sixsmith

*''Blood Sympathy'' (1993) *''Born Guilty'' (1995) *''Killing the Lawyers'' (1997) *''Singing the Sadness'' (1999) *''The Roar of the Butterflies'' (2008)

Other

*''Fell of Dark'' (1971) *''The Castle of the Demon'' (1971) (As Patrick Ruell) (also published as ''The Turning of the Tide'') *''A Fairly Dangerous Thing'' (1972) *''Red Christmas'' (1972) (As Patrick Ruell) *''Heart Clock'' (1973) (As Dick Morland) (also published as ''Matlock's System'' as Reginald Hill) *''Death Takes a Low Road'' (1974) (As Patrick Ruell) (also published as ''The Low Road'') *''A Very Good Hater'' (1974) *''Albion! Albion!'' (1974) (As Dick Morland) (also published as ''Singleton's Law'' as Reginald Hill) *''Beyond the Bone'' (1975) (also published as ''Urn Burial'' ) (As Patrick Ruell) *''Another Death in Venice'' (1976) *''Captain Fantom'' (1978) (As Charles Underhill) – inspired by the life of Carlo Fantom *''The Forging of Fantom'' (1979) (As Charles Underhill) *''Pascoe's Ghost and Other Brief Chronicles of Crime'' S(1979) #"Pascoe's Ghost" # (A Dalziel and Pascoe story) #"The Trunk in the Attic" #"The Rio de Janeiro Paper" #"Threatened Species" #"Snowball" #"Exit Line" #"Dalziel's Ghost" (A Dalziel and Pascoe story) *''The Spy's Wife'' (1980) *'' Who Guards a Prince?'' (1982) *'' Traitor's Blood'' (1983) *''Guardians of the Prince'' (1983) *''No Man's Land'' (1985) *''The Long Kill'' (1986) (As Patrick Ruell) *''There Are No Ghosts in the Soviet Union and Other Stories'' S1987) #"There Are No Ghosts in the Soviet Union" (Novella) #"Bring Back the Cat!" (A Joe Sixsmith story) #"Poor Emma" #"Auteur Theory" (A Dalziel and Pascoe story) #"The Bull Ring" #"Crowded Hour" *''The Collaborators'' (1987) *''Death of a Dormouse'' (1987) (As Patrick Ruell) *''Dream of Darkness'' (1989) (As Patrick Ruell) *''Brother's Keeper'' (1992) (short stories) *''The Only Game'' (1993) (As Patrick Ruell) *''The Stranger House'' (2005) *''The Woodcutter'' (2010)

Short stories

* "Fool of Myself" (2005), published in ''The Detection Collection'', edited by

Simon Brett Simon Anthony Lee Brett Order of the British Empire, OBE Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, FRSL (born 28 October 1945 in Worcester Park, Surrey, England) is a British author of detective fiction, a playwright, and a producer-writer for ...

Awards and honours

*1990 British Crime Writers' Association

Gold Dagger The CWA Gold Dagger is an award given annually by the Crime Writers' Association of the United Kingdom since 1960 for the best crime novel of the year. From 1955 to 1959, the organization named their top honor as the Crossed Red Herring Award. ...

for '' Bones and Silence'' *1995 British Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger Lifetime Achievement Award *1997 British Crime Writers' Association Short Story Dagger for ''On the Psychiatrist's Couch'' in ''WHYDUNNIT, The 1997 CWA Anthology (Severn House)'' *1999 Elected Fellow of the

Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820 by King George IV to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 800 Fellows, elect ...

*1999 The Barry Award for Best Novel for ''On Beulah Height'' *2001 The

Macavity Award The Macavity Awards, established in 1987, are a group of literary awards presented annually to mystery writers. Nominated and voted upon annually by the members of the Mystery Readers International, the award is named for the "Macavity, mystery cat ...

for Best Short Story for ''A Candle for Christmas'' in ''EQMN'', January 2000. *2011 The Barry Award for Best British Novel for ''The Woodcutter''

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hill, Reginald 1936 births 2012 deaths 20th-century English novelists Alumni of St Catherine's College, Oxford Neurological disease deaths in England Barry Award winners Cartier Diamond Dagger winners Deaths from brain cancer in England English crime fiction writers English male novelists English mystery writers Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Macavity Award winners Members of the Detection Club People educated at Carlisle Grammar School People from West Hartlepool 20th-century English male writers People from Ravenglass Writers from County Durham