On Beulah Height

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It had been the first real test of his new relationship. Edwin Digweed, though fond enough of animals, made it clear he had no intention of sharing his home with a free roaming primate. ‘A ménage a trois may have its attractions,’ he said. ‘A menagerie a trois has none.’ Weaving their pain into his densely textured story of Dendale’s cursed past and haunted present, Hill creates a tragic tale of loss and regret and the persistence of grief” ( The New York Times Book Review).

Episodes listed beside a character with a "–" indicate the character's regular appearance in the show. Episodes listed separately are guest appearances made by the character before or after their regular stint. Betsy could easily have been the last to see each of the 3 girls alive. We only have her word for where she was and what happened. She has no alibis. A village destroyed to make way for a reservoir oscillates forever between these two states. It no longer exists in the form that it did, irrevocably transformed by the process, with the ‘village’ of drowned village put under great strain, as it is now uninhabitable. For the purposes of this essay, uninhabitable places are described as ‘non-places’ ( Augé) although this thinking of fraught spatiality is also indebted to the work of Jacques Derrida and Maurice Blanchot. In a wider sense, each of the texts examined in this essay inscribe both aspects of the Greek roots to the word nostalgia, the return home — or even the return of the home — is a key aspect of the narratives of both On Beulah Height and Haweswater.Susannah Corbett as Ellie Pascoe recurring from " An Autumn Shroud", " Ruling Passion", " A Killing Kindness", " Under World", " Bones and Silence", " The Wood Beyond", " On Beulah Height", " Recalled to Life", " Time to Go", " Above the Law" and " Dead Meat"

This is Hill at the absolute peak of his considerable powers. The imagery of the drowned village gives a kind of mythical air to the story, which is magnified by the use of a children’s story about the Nix, a local legend involving a creature who steals children. Pascoe’s little daughter Rosie is seriously ill in hospital for most of the story, and her dreams and delirium add to this somewhat dark, otherwordly atmosphere.

Hill employs a writing technique in which the story is seen through the eyes of several characters, and viewpoint shifts frequently. The book begins with Allgood's childhood deposition to police, then moves to Pascoe's sunny suburban household, where Dalziel interrupts a family brunch. A chapter later, we're inside the head of little Lorraine as she hops out of bed early and heads out for that ill-fated walk with her dog. Before the book is over, we'll see the world through the eyes of more than a dozen people, including Pascoe's daughter Rosie, who has her own chilling brush with death: Still far above her, but now clearly visible, she glimpses the tiny circle of blue sky. And as she looks, the blue sky becomes a frame round a familiar face and she hears a familiar voice crying her name. Detective Constable Parvez "Fez" Lateef (Wayne Perrey) ( Heads You Lose – The Cave Woman): Parvez Lateef is the bright boy with all the right ideas. He is able to work extremely well as an independent party but is also able to work effectively as part of a team. He is Dalziel's golden boy, able to come up with all the right results as and when he is required to. Perhaps the most educated and aware of all of the CID staff that Dalziel has had the pleasure to work with, Parvez is also great with computers, being able to analyse spreadsheets, figures and data to get information on the technological side of cases. He is loyal to his team, and is prepared to go the extra mile to catch the suspects. Dalziel is forced to accept new recruit Sgt. Peter Pascoe as the pair team up for the very first time to investigate a serious murder case. Wetherton Rugby Club's golden boy, Sam Connon, wakes up after arriving at home with a hangover, to find his wife, Mary, dead in the armchair. Being vice-president of the rugby club himself, Dalziel decides to ruffle a few feathers and find out who had enough of a motive to want to kill her. However, with the murder weapon nowhere to be found, evidence of the killer's involvement is rather thin on the ground. The discovery of hidden 'dirty' letters, discussion of naked foreplay at the bedroom window and the unearthing of the murder weapon during the search for a missing eight-year-old boy make for the final pieces of the puzzle. Does someone at the rugby club bear a terrible grudge against the couple – or is the true murderer closer to home? For now, as his gaze moved from the lovely and beloved face of the wife to the ravaged face of the husband, he thought he saw there, as clearly as the returning outline of Dendale village under the searching eye of the sun, the lineaments of guilt and the acceptance of discovery. (480) Betsy, even in her own accounts, can’t hide the fact she is jealous of the lithe and pretty little blond haired girls (those who disappeared). In particular she envies her doted-upon cousin with glamourous parents and comfortable life-style. Wishing you had someone else’s life is one thing, but Betsy actually takes her cousin’s place.

The ensemble cast all feature in On Beulah Height. Edgar Wield is adjusting to his personal happiness as a gay man-in-a-relationship with wanting to be accepted as a brilliant detective. With modernity raising its ugly head in Yorkshire, the grand idea of the Water Board was to flood a local valley to make a reservoir. Of course they had to bulldoze the homes of Dendale, the farming town inconveniently situated in that valley, first, and relocate the families. That was when the children began to disappear. Great, thought Novello. But you don’t have to report to a bunch of men who aren’t all that impressed even when you have something positive to report! But the scuttling noise behind is very close now. She feels those bony fingers tighten round her ankles, she feels those rapier nails digging into her flesh. KAREN G. ANDERSON, editor of the Seattle-based magazine Northwest Health, writes frequently about crime fiction for January Magazine.

Abstract

Any idea that 28 years into this series might make Reginald Hill lose his appetite for his characters can be dismissed. On Beulah Height is a superb example of the ensemble police procedural with a multiple perspective narrative.