A pinch of snuff

A Dalziel and Pascoe crime thriller in which Pascoe's dentist airs his concerns about the unwholesome films being shown at the Calliope Club, and then the cinema is wrecked and its elderly owner is murdered. From the author of KILLING THE LAWYERS, THE WOOD BEYOND, PICTURES OF PERFECTION and BORN GUILTY.

Splitting a main character into two parts that compliment and confound each other has worked well for mystery writers from Conan Doyle to Rex Stout (and for non-mystery writers such as Patrick O'Brian in his Aubrey/Maturin sea stories). Reginald Hill's unique contributions to this form are his books about two policemen in an unnamed city in Northern England, Detectives Dalziel (pronounced "Dee-al" in the TV version) and Pascoe. Both get to show off their strengths and shortcomings in this wonderfully macabre second book in the series; Dalziel's brawn and instinct meets Pascoe's intellect as the two investigate pornographic "snuff" films in which the actors really wind up dead.