Born Guilty (Joe Sixsmith, Book 2) - Softcover

Hill, Reginald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007334818 ISBN 13: 9780007334810

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2010

Synopsis

‘Few writers in the genre today have Hill’s gifts: formidable intelligence, quick humour, compassion and a prose style that blends elegance and grace’ Donna Leon, Sunday Times

Hurrying out of St Monkey’s church one day, Joe Sixsmith stumbles across a boy’s corpse in a cardboard box and into more trouble than he’s ever known.

His casebook is full to bursting: retired colonial Mrs C. demands to know how the boy got there; Gallie, the Mutant from Outer Space, urges him to find the stranger nosing into her granddad’s past; while Butcher, that briefest of briefs, is hellbent on digging the dirt on a deputy head’s out-of-school activities.

Joe threads his way through the mean streets of Luton, fighting off cops, druggies and the matchmaking machinations of his Auntie Mirabelle. But there’s little joy to be found in the truth: that kids grow up fast, and that even the luckiest ones are born guilty.

About this title

About the Author:

Reginald Hill was brought up in Cumbria, and has returned there after many years in Yorkshire. With his first crime novel, A Clubbable Woman, he was hailed as 'the crime novel's best hope' and twenty years on he has more than fulfilled that prophecy.

From Booklist:

Hill has produced nearly three dozen novels, generating critical acclaim and a host of loyal fans who will find his newest hero, Joe Sixsmith, among mysterydom's most unique and eccentric characters. Joe is a redundant British lathe operator, black, balding, decidedly middle-aged, and ever at the mercy of his curmudgeonly aunt Mirabelle and his nearly human cat, Whitey, who thrives on a diet of pork rinds and beer and keeps Joe on the straight and narrow. In his latest adventure, following Blood Sympathy , Joe leaves choir practice and takes a shortcut through the church graveyard, where he makes a grisly discovery--a young boy's body jammed into a box among the gravestones. Although the local coppers dismiss the case as an unfortunate drug overdose, Joe can't get the boy out of his mind. Poking and probing among the village's down-and-outs as well as its upper crust, Joe keeps at it until he discovers the shocking secrets of some of the town's most prominent citizens. A blend of Chaplin and Clouseau, Joe Sixsmith is endearingly funny, but he also has an unerring knack for discovering some of life's most serious truths in the midst of his bumbling misadventures. An outstanding read. Emily Melton

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0007334818
• ISBN 13: 9780007334810
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224