Regular marked price: $19.95Discount Price: $7.99
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How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Type of bind: Kindle Edition
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
Format: Kindle Book
Label: HarperCollins e-books
Manufacturer: HarperCollins e-books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 416
Printing Date: March 13, 2007
Publishing house: HarperCollins e-books
Release Date: March 13, 2007
Sale Popularity Level: 4875
Studio: HarperCollins e-books
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Product Description:
There was no sign of life. But not for a second did Pascoe admit the possibility of death. Dalziel was indestructible. Dalziel is, and was, and forever shall be, world without end, amen. Everybody knew that. Therein lay half his power. Chief constables might come and chief constables might go, but Fat Andy went on forever.
Caught in the blast of a huge explosion, Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel lies on a hospital bed, with only a life support system and his indomitable will between him and the Great Beyond. Meanwhile, his colleague, Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe, is determined to find those responsible.
Ignoring his own injuries, the advice of his friends, and the pleas of his wife, Pascoe follows a winding trail to the Templars, a mysterious group that believes the only way to fight terrorism is through terror. Where the arm of the law cannot reach, their work begins. Soon Pascoe comes to suspect that they may have support and sympathy in high places, from men ready to accept the death of a policeman or of any other innocent bystander as regrettable but unavoidable collateral damage.
From the streets of Manchester to the Yorkshire countryside, Pascoe searches for the truth. And above it all, like a huge zeppelin threatening to break from its moorings, hovers the disembodied spirit of Andy Dalziel.
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Rated by buyers 
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First time I have read anything by Reginald Hill. He is an excellent writer, good character description. Mr. Hill is British and I think there is a British flavor in his writing. Looking forward to reading more of his work.
The Fat Man is not a character in this book but his presence is felt.
Rated by buyers 
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I was able to read this after making my way through almost all of the D&P novels -- what a great capper!
Rated by buyers -
While the famous duo have entertained millions for a long time, I found it a pleasant relief to read a story where Pascoe was the central character, not the "sidekick" of the dominant Dalziel. Didn't miss the Fat Man one bit.
Rated by buyers -
I enjoyed this book very much. I have a decent vocabulary and found myself looking up words frequently. Not usually true in a "mystery". I think, to really enjoy this to the fullest, one should be familiar with the series to understand the relationships. This series in one of my very favorites, for its plot, writing and humor. Love the characters.
Rated by buyers -
Reginald Hill is a highly-skilled wordsmith and Fat Andy Dalziel (a name pronounced, of course, in no rational manner) is so strong a character that there is always some joy to be found in one of Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe novels.
Not all D&P books are of equal joy, however. Dalziel is always an appealing and appalling delight but Pascoe, his junior partner in the series, is correspondingly and even insistently bland. Worse, he is married to Ellie, one of the most singularly dreary female characters in all of literature, a feminine blight almost as horrendous as the ghastly Susan Whats'ername in the American Spenser series.
"Death Comes for the Fat Man" has its virtues but, as Dalziel is effectively out of the main lines of the plot and action, lying in a coma, the story is perforce carried by Pascoe. And yes, in the absence of his coarse, blustering, overweight mentor, Bland Peter assumes some of Dalziel's characteristics out of sheer reaction, but it's a matter of too little and too late. And--could it be doubted?--Ellie inevitably rushes in to fill the vacuum of Fat Andy's absence, not so much in wordage as in her sheer, glum, annoying, whining, fault-finding, grumbling, unsupportive, unforgiving presence.
Hill is a highly successful commercial commodity. I think it is safe to assume that his publishers are so happy to have his name on a manuscript that they have foresworn such trifles as editing to tighten up his work or suggesting that his plot devices are downright idiotic. The particular idiocy in this book is in the author's choice of villains: a coven of right-wing, murderous prats who fancy themselves the Knights Templars reborn while messily doing away with British Moslems who have incurred their knightly ire for one reason or another. That even Hill is unable to take them seriously is evident in his comparisons of them to the boys' school desperados of Kipling's "Stalky & Co."
Hill is also back on one of his hobby-horses, an old favorite that has turned up with increasing frequency in his more recent books: the deviousness, duplicity and sheer dangerousness of the right-wingers who run Britain's security services. Ha, considering the track record of those services, such a vision of their competence is one that only a dedicated and terminally fretful left-winger could hold.
Despite the faults of "Death Comes for the Fat Man," Reginald Hill is still enough of a writer to make it worthwhile for a reader to put down a couple of dollars for the privilege of reading his book. The book's good enough, but it certainly is no equal to the earlier and much tighter members of the series. I give it four weak stars.
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