Death’s Jest-Book

Death’s Jest-Book
Reginald Hill

Reginald Hill’s best-selling duo, Dalziel and Pascoe, return in this brilliant, complex and ultimately moving crime novel: ‘Reginald Hill is probably the best living crime writer in the English-speaking world’ – IndependentEx-convict and aspiring academic, Franny Roote, has started writing enigmatic letters to DCI Peter Pascoe who immediately smells a rat. DS Edgar Wield, intervening in a suspected kidnapping, takes a vulnerable rentboy under his wing, one who is hiding an earth-shattering secret. And young DC Bowler is looking forward to a weekend away with his girlfriend – but her dreams are filled with a horror too terrifying to share.Detective Chief Superintendent Andy Dalziel, lording it over his team, is famed for his omniscience. But even he is unable to foresee the disaster towards which they are all tumbling…

REGINALD HILL

DEATH’S JEST-BOOK

A Dalziel and Pascoe novel

Copyright (#ulink_453d76f9-ca60-59b7-ba84-f3b302256018)

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain in 2002 by HarperCollins

Copyright © Reginald Hill 2008

Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007313204

Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780007396351

Version: 2015-06-22

Dedication (#ulink_e0ad25bb-a72d-5349-8c68-e5f7c8671374)

For Julia

who never hassles

thanks

The woodcut illustrations which prefigure each of the novel’s thirteen sections are taken from Hans Holbein the Younger’s Dance of Death

Epigraph (#ulink_72134d54-5435-5829-a411-3a59d617eba6)

For death is more ‘a jest’ than Life, you see Contempt grows quick from familiarity. I owe this wisdom to Anatomy.

T. L. BEDDOES Lines to B.W. Proctor

… fat men can’t write sonnets

T. L. BEDDOES The Bride’s Tragedy l.ii.

Contents

Cover (#u854db47b-788c-58f5-b491-5235f78d6876)

Title Page (#uf12bf8f6-770a-5527-a2ea-5f337cffefd4)

Copyright (#ulink_3a0d8f4d-6ced-512c-9e6d-07de220ebb79)

Dedication (#ulink_eff8b035-a38d-5261-b850-fbd0044dcdde)

Epigraph (#ulink_91bdf532-1a93-5d55-a15b-4abfa9a231eb)

1. The Physician (#ulink_ca198f2b-f29d-5767-82f8-dc138373b685)

2. The Robber (#ulink_5db08439-5b97-58c0-bf2c-fc1da74feeea)

3. The Knight (#ulink_3b5d1966-166a-54ee-8191-2cc184021f62)

4. The Newly-Wed (#ulink_c8a9a835-23db-5c07-a9ec-dd82d7d26bce)

5. The Cemetery (#litres_trial_promo)

6. The Ship (#litres_trial_promo)

7. The Temptation (#litres_trial_promo)

8. The Queen (#litres_trial_promo)

9. The Drunkards (#litres_trial_promo)

10. The Friar (#litres_trial_promo)

11. The Pedlar (#litres_trial_promo)

12. The Child (#litres_trial_promo)

13. Judgment Day (#litres_trial_promo)