The Price of Butcher's Meat

“Reginald Hill is quite simply one of the best at work today.”

—Boston Globe

There is no end to the praise mystery writer Reginald Hill has already earned for his British police procedurals featuring Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe and Detective Superintendent “Fat Andy” Dalziel. Having recently bested Harlan Coben, Val McDermid, Michael Connelly, and James Patterson for the Crime Writers Association’s Mystery and Thriller People’s Choice Dagger, the master returns with The Price of Butcher’s Meat—as a recuperating Andy Dalziel (following his close brush with mortality in Death Comes for the Fat Man) gets involved in the murderous politics of a not-so-peaceful seaside community. The Price of Butcher’s Meat is more “great stuff from one of the greats, and a true must for fans of British crime” (Denver Rocky Mountain News).

After a close encounter with a bomb, Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel recuperates at the Avalon Clinic in the quaint seaside resort of Sandytown. But soon he begins to suspect that those outside the convalescent home have just as many problems as the residents.

There's a psychiatrist with more to hide than his patients, a pair of powerful landowners with very different plans for putting the resort on the map, a Chinese acupuncturist with a Yorkshire accent, a skinny-dipping baronet and his ice-box sister, and a man from Dalziel's past who ought to be dead.

When someone actually does turn up dead, and under the most macabre circumstances, Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe is called onto the scene. Together again, Dalziel and Pascoe investigate a baffling and complex case as further corpses make it increasingly hard for Sandytown to justify its claim to be "Home of the Healthy Holiday." But it's certainly been put on the map. . . .

“The fertility of Hill’s imagination, the range of his power, the sheer quality of his literary style never cease to delight.” - Val McDermid, author of A Darker Domain

“Few writers in the genre today have Hill’s gifts: formidable intelligence, quick humor, compassion, and a prose style that blends elegance and grace.” - Donna Leon

"One of the best mysteries of the year. . . . It’s superb. . . . Treat yourself—the pages move as fast as a pint in Andy’s hands.” - Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Reginald Hill, the most playful of genre authors, fancies himself a latter-day Jane Austen in The Price of Butcher’s Meat. . . . Hill pulls off the clever literary jest of projecting Austen’s unfinished novel Sandition into modern times. . . . [He] proves himself brilliant at recycling 19th-century characters and conventions...while gleefully adding macabre genre touches.” - New York Times Book Review

“Hill provides his usual deeply satisfying whodunit. . . . Fans of the Fat Man are in for a treat.” - Entertainment Weekly

“Great stuff from one of the greats, and a true must for fans of British crime.” - Rocky Mountain News

“Reginald Hill is one of the masters of crime fiction, and his customary wit, plotting, and sense of style are every bit as much in evidence in The Price of Butcher’s Meat as they are in the previous Dalziel and Pascoe novels.” - Peter Robinson, New York Times bestselling author of All the Colors of Darkness

“Reginald Hill’s novels are really dances to the music of time, his heroes and villains interconnecting, their stories entwining.” - Ian Rankin

“A literary frolic, Hill has brought the epistolary novel into the 21st century with e-mails and a digital voice recorder. . .. .Final word: Great stuff from one of the greats, and a true must for fans of British crime.” - Rocky Mountain News

“[A] meaty mystery. . . . The Fat Man is back. . . . This is good news indeed. . . . . The Price of Butcher’s Meat offers an intellectually satisfying mystery, deep character studies and witty social commentary clothed in elegant, literate prose. Hill’s mastery of narrative voice creates vitality out of devices that in lesser hands could be disastrous. . . . [It all] works brilliantly.” - Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Excellent. . . . Hill’s perfect pitch (especially for the short, pithy details of dialogue and character description) carries the story through all sorts of villains.” - Publishers Weekly

“One of England’s most innovative and erudite mystery writers. . . . When it comes to challenging the mind, a Hill novel is better than Sudoku.” - Orlando Sentinel