| Title | : | Ruling Passion (Dalziel \u0026 Pascoe, #3) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0440168899 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780440168898 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 320 |
| Publication | : | First published April 1, 1973 |
Ruling Passion (Dalziel \u0026 Pascoe, #3) Reviews
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Tragedy at Thornton Lacey...
Peter Pascoe and his girlfriend, Ellie Soper, are off for a weekend break to visit old university friends now living in the village of Thornton Lacey. But when they get there, they are met with tragedy – three of their friends lie dead from shotgun wounds and the fourth, Colin, is missing. Not surprisingly, Colin immediately becomes the chief suspect, but neither Peter nor Ellie can bring themselves to believe he could have done such a horrific thing. Meantime, back in Mid-Yorkshire, Dalziel wants Peter back as soon as possible, since they are in the middle of a major investigation of a string of burglaries that seems to be escalating into violence.
First published in 1973, this is the third book in the Dalziel and Pascoe series, and shows a big leap in the development of some of the characters. Pascoe has changed out of all recognition from the rather commonplace young man of the first book,
A Clubbable Woman. He's now showing the intelligence and sensitivity that make him such an enjoyable character, both in his own right and as a contrast to the brash and arrogant Dalziel. Dalziel still has some way to go in terms of development – he's still not quite the larger than life figure he will become. I can't quite put my finger on what's missing in his character so far, but am looking forward to spotting it as the series progresses. I think it may be his touch of omniscience, or that he hasn't quite fully become the 'big fish in a small pond' of later books.
Ellie, too, has developed a good deal from the last book,
An Advancement of Learning, but is also not yet fully the Ellie of the middle and later ones. With her character, Hill gets away from the, to modern eyes, outdated portrayal of women as little more than sexual temptresses that he gave us in the first book. Ellie is a mixture of strength and softness – a feminist at a time when feminism hadn't quite worked out what it wanted to be when it grew up. Volatile and feisty, politically on the left and therefore deeply ambivalent about Peter's job in that tool of capitalist oppression, the police force, she often gives him a hard time. But deep down she knows he's one of the good guys and agrees, though she might never say it, that his job is one that needs to be done, and is better done by honourable, intelligent men than by thugs like Dalziel (it's the '70s, chaps, so forgive the inbuilt sexism in that sentence – Hill will introduce women police detectives later). In this book, though, she also begins to get to know Dalziel better and starts the slow process of realising that maybe his thuggish exterior hides a more complex and nuanced morality than she's ready to give him credit for.
Pascoe's relationship with Ellie and this trip back to his university days highlights his intellectual side, which in turns allows Hill to start what becomes a feature of later books – references, some subtle, some humorous, to the greats of English literature, especially Jane Austen. The title is from Pope and his poem Eloisa and Abelard plays a minor role in the plot. If you spotted that the name of the village comes from Ms Austen's Mansfield Park, well done! Some of the characters' names are also from Austen, often her juvenilia. If you like these sorts of references, it can be fun trying to spot them, or googling them; but, if the thought makes you go cross-eyed with boredom, I can reassure you that they're completely incidental to enjoying the books. When I first read them, long, long, ago, I was unaware that Hill liked to play these games, never spotted them, and never felt that I was missing anything.
The plot in this one is deeply confusing with too many people playing minor parts and too much coincidence coming into play. I'm finding on this re-read that the plot tends to be the weakest part of each of the books so far. It's always set up interestingly, as with this one in the triple murder scene, but somehow it tends to get a bit over complicated as the book progresses. However, it's the quality of the writing and characterisation that lift even these early books above the average. There is always plenty of humour to offset the darkness of the storylines. Hill gives a believable picture of Ellie and Peter's grief at the deaths of their friends, but without wallowing in it. And their growing relationship is handled beautifully, showing all the compromises that have to be made when two strong characters collide, but also the rewards that come in a partnership of real equals. This one works fine as a standalone, as they nearly all do, but I must say that reading them in order gives extra pleasure in seeing both the characters and Hill's writing style develop as the series progresses. 4½ stars for me, so rounded up.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com -
Two parallel plots, one involving the murder of university friends of Pascoe, keep our duo occupied - a good police procedural nearly fifty years old but not too dated at all.
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I think this is where the Dalziel and Pascoe series really starts to hit its stride. Although I enjoyed the first two books, I didn't really think they were fully representative of the strengths of the series. This book, while not as strong as some of the later ones, feels like it has all of the elements in place. In particular, Andy Dalziel and Peter Pascoe both really come across as well-rounded characters.
It's a small thing, but I was also impressed with how Hill handled the passage of time between this book and the last. It was clear that some time had passed since the last book, and Peter and Ellie's relationship had evolved from "awkwardly reunited" to "seriously involved." Hill makes all of this clear without a lot of expository backstory at the beginning of the book.
If I have a complaint, it's that the chain of coincidences and previously unrevealed connections linking the crimes in this book feels a bit forced. Though it is quite entertaining watching it all being untangled. -
Unabridged Book #3
blurb - Pascoe and his girlfriend Ellie arrive in Thornton Lacey to spend a weekend with old friends from their student days. They find instead three of their friends dead of shotgun wounds, and a fourth friend at large, sought by the local police as a suspect in the killings. Meanwhile, back at home in Yorkshire, Dalziel wants Pascoe back to investigate a string of unsolved burglaries.
Readshoutedby Glover
All Hill's are a low 3.
3* A Clubbable Woman (Dalziel & Pascoe, #1)
3* The Woodcutter
3* Ruling Passion (Dalziel & Pascoe, #3)
3* A Killing Kindness (Dalziel & Pascoe, #6)
3* Bones And Silence (Dalziel & Pascoe, #11) -
Detective Peter Pascoe is the protagonist here, with his boss the Falstaffian Andy Dalziel providing amusing grotesqueries. The story, set in a picturesque Cotswolds village, involves three murdered friends of Pascoe and his girlfriend Ellie, with the fourth friend missing and presumed to be the killer, possibly a suicide now. Pascoe has to figure out how the murders relate to a series of thefts of antiques, and a man swindled in a property deal. Nothing about the story is terribly compelling, but Hill's deft and comic writing helps sustain interest:
"Besides, Sandra says riding gives you a big bum."
"John!" protested his wife. But she met Marianne's quizzical gaze with the unruffled smile of one whose own buttocks were as compact as a boy's.
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"Well, you've been a great help. We're looking for a thin man of thirty or forty, or a fat man of forty or fifty, or a thin or fat man of almost any age at all."
"It could be a woman," suggested the doctor. -
I mostly enjoyed it, but towards the end it becomes a little heavy-handed, the story doesn't flow so easily. Pity, because I liked to have Pascoe at the centre for once. There are also too many characters who hardly ever appear in person but who have quite an impact on the story. I simply can't find it in myself to care about them, I'm having a hard time remembering their names and keeping them apart. So two tepid stars only ...
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A really good story and I was very much enjoying it up until the last 50 or so pages. The ending just seemed to be overlong and overly complicated. I marked it down to 3 stars for that.
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DAME AGATHA CHRISTIE AND HER PEERS 1973
CAST - 1: Sergent Peter Pascoe (seems kind and reports to Andy Dalziel who seems unkind and uses the term 'stupid twat'' often) and friend/girlfriend Ellie (the kind of gal who needs to be sedated and comforted after seeing the results of a crime then turns into a good detective because the author must at least have one strong female lead) visit college chums but upon arrival find Timothy, Carlo, (both gay, live together, don't seem to be a couple as the author can't go that far and kills them off instantly) and Rose dead. Rose's husband, Colin, has disappeared. Angus Pelman, neighbor, is described as 'John Wayne' and likes guns and hunting. Given the author has told us Carlo loved westerns, this early red herring (?) of a tough guy blasting away at gay folks is in very poor taste, at a minimum. Then, the "Complacent bitch" enters and I almost closed the book.
PLACE - 3: A nice English village with 2 competing pubs, etc. You've been here often in British mysteries and you want to go back.
CRIME - 4: Three DEATHS before the novel starts! Could there be more? (Yes!) Is someone raging mad...
INVESTIGATION - 2: Interesting at first but Hill seems to back himself into a corner...then
RESOLUTION - 1: WTF?
SUMMARY - 2.2- For me, I felt this one to be seriously outdated with an unbelievable solution. But one is instantly convinced that Colin MUST be the killer, the cast members still alive agree, so you gotta read on. Nice hook by Hill, the type of hook one often finds in American mysteries. -
Author Reginald Hill tosses one of his main characters into the witness role of a murder and has fun working out his character in the role and as a member of law enforcement. I believe Hill handles this well and better fleshes out his character Pascoe and his girlfriend. There's another active set of mysteries also brewing that pitches character Pascoe back and forth from mystery to mystery. Seems to me Hill could've worked that part out much better. Hill makes it all confusing with little effort to establishing setting from one to the other.
Set more to the side is the second of Hill's duo, Dalziel, who is relegated to humorous sidekick. Dalziel does help with wrap up, but still more a minor role.
The writing is excellent. Especially with characters. The settings are so-so. The plotting should have been reworked.
Bottom line: I recommend this book. 5 out of ten points. -
A great Dalziel and Pascoe story, with plenty of the sharp wit and humour that Hill's well-known for. Complicated double plot and lots of intersecting story lines. A great read.
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This is probably at least the third time I have read this book. First published in 1973 this is the third book in the series. By now Pascoe and Ellie are a couple and are talking about getting married and whilst Pascoe is still a Detective Sergeant his promotion to Detective Inspector is not far away.
There are two main strands to this story. Firstly while visiting friends down south Pascoe and Ellie come across their murdered bodies so Pascoe finds himself in the unfamiliar role of being a witness in a police investigation. Secondly at home Dalziel and Pascoe investigate a series of house breakings which also involve a murder. This is a good read laced with humour but I felt the housebreaking story was resolved too early in the book leaving the book to end with all Pascoe's misunderstandings about the murder of his friends. -
Another great Andy Dalziel (pronounced De-el for those not familiar) and Peter Pascoe novel. I will just go with the Independent's review when this book was first published in 1973. "He is probably the best living male crime writer in the English speaking world."(Although he died in 2012 - a sad loss to his avid readers). The TV series is well worth watching but the books are simply brilliant. This multiple murder case plus a series of seemingly unrelated robberies is clearly worked through by Hill. His writing style is so eloquent and entrancing that even if the stories were not as good as they are, his style is enough to engage even the most demanding reader. The more I read, the more I enjoy Reginald Hill's work. As I have commented regarding some other author's, if you like the genre, just start at book one and work your way through them.
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Book 3 in the series, and I'm still not hooked. I am becoming a little fond of gross, always-scratching and not especially polite Dalziel though, and want Peter Pascoe to be successful. So perhaps something is sticking. This was an especially gruesome crime, and sad, and once again I couldn't keep the characters straight. Perhaps I should go back to reading something with more easily-distinguishable characters like "Hop on Pop"...
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Start with 'Ruling Passion' and work your way up through 'Pictures of Perfection', for a view of how characters take hold of an author, and grow into fully formed people.
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This is the third in the Dalziel and Pascoe series. I recently discovered that I had forgotten to read the earlier books he has written so I am slowly doing some catchup right now. When I first dipped into the series, Peter Pascoe was married. In this, the third book, Peter Pascoe is a Detective Sargent who is in love with Ellie Soper, a lecturer at a local college. The book opens with them going to a reunion with old college chums early on a Saturday morning. They were supposed to get there Friday evening, but Peter was delayed by a case. However, they are invited for breakfast so they are out bright and early and arrive before 9:00 am. Nobody answers the door. Perhaps they are still sleeping. Unfortunately for Peter and Ellie they are all dead except for Colin who is missing. Peter calls the local police and after they eliminate them from their inquiries he sets about trying to find the killers. Unfortunately, his boss, Andy Dalziel, has other ideas. There is a burglar that needs to be found and he can’t spare Peter who returns dutifully if a bit reluctantly.
True to form this is much more complicated than it seems to be although Colin is the suspect for most of the book. Meanwhile the burglaries continue. I always say this is the best one after I’ve read it, but really there was only one that I didn’t finish because the tone was so completely different from the rest of the books. I don’t remember the name of it. I just remember I tossed it away in disgust! This is a good one, however, and has inspired me to read even more of the old ones. -
Peter Pascoe and Ellie Soper are supposed to spend the weekend at Rose and Colin Hopkins' refurbished cottage in Thornton Lacy, a tiny Yorkshire hamlet. Pascoe hasn't seen the Hopkins couple since they married 5 years ago and there will also be a gay couple, Timmy and Carlos, spending the weekend there too. Dalziel keeps Pascoe at work way too late so Peter and Ellie set out in the morning to join their friends for breakfast. Unfortunately someone has blown away all of them but Colin with a shotgun. Timmy and Carlos' blue Mini car is missing so Colin is assumed to have run off in it. But he's got no reason for the murders. He's a successful author about halfway through writing a book on rural poverty, so successful that he has become one of the 'pallid cits', pale-faced London office workers who can afford to buy a nice house in the country. Pascoe and Dalziel become involved in investigating the murders and discover the dirty secrets in the village, unfaithful wives, polluted waterways, unsuccessful business investments, and living beyond one's means to impress the neighbors. Complicated and excellent plot, valid motivations, and shear luck discovering clues. Good book to read one month into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, US deaths from Covid-19 reach a million (1,001,175), and the CDC tries to adjust advice for Americans unmasking in every situation because we're all sick of the pandemic. Oh, and there are monster tornados tearing through New Orleans, and the entire West Coast from San Francisco south to Mexico and east to southern Arizona has a scorching heatwave because summer starts in March now.
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Detective Sergeant Peter Pascoe and his girlfriend Ellie are heading to a small village to visit friends, but when they arrive they find three of their friends dead and the fourth missing, presumed guilty of the crime by the local police. Pascoe has to serve as a witness rather than being involved in the investigation, but of course it is impossible for him not to go looking for answers, no matter the price….I don’t know how I managed to miss this, the third book in the Dalziel and Pascoe series, given that I’ve been reading them in order for about the last 2 years and have had this book on my shelf for ages. It’s a bit strange going so far back in the series, particularly as the last Dalziel and Pascoe book that I read was the next-to-last in the series as a whole; while Pascoe seems pretty fully characterized here (and Dalziel too, though in a much smaller role), Ellie doesn’t seem nearly as fierce as we know she is! Still, a good read as ever; recommended!
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Third in the Dalziel and Pascoe series of British police procedurals. This time Pascoe really takes the lead when he arrives with his girlfriend at an estate in a small village of a college friend for a weekend of reuniting of old friends. Unfortunately he arrives to find three of the four friends they were supposed to join murdered and the fourth one missing. Meanwhile before he left for the weekend reunion, he was working on a series of burglaries with Dalziel. He has to take unofficial investigatory role in the murders while trying to do his official Investigation of the burglaries. I actually would have given in a five star rating until the last ten percent of the book which I found to be somewhat muddled.
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I’m on the verge of giving up on this series. It gets one more chance in a few months.
In this third installment, Peter Pascoe takes his current main squeeze to a country town a day’s drive from London where they find three horrifically murdered bodies—all three friends of the couple. A fourth person, the host who had invited Pascoe to the cottage, is missing.
Pascoe is concerned local law enforcement will limit their investigation only to his friend who is missing, and he realizes more is in play than meets the eye.
His associate, the fat insufferable Andy Dalziel is involved in the book, too. The interaction between these two is just bizarre and almost incomprehensible. Here’s hoping the series gets better with the next book. -
Pascoe and Ellie have a planned weekend with friends. When they arrive, late because of Pascoe's work, everything goes sideways. All of their friends are dead and they are suddenly the witnesses. Pascoe also has to deal with a complex set of burglaries that have turned to burglaries with a side of murder in his own work. Dalziel is dealing on his own with some health issues.
The production value was a lot better than in
An Advancement of Learning. The marbles were gone from the narrator's mouth and there were only a few things that were hard to understand. -
I didn't enjoy listening to this as much as the others in this series. Firstly, the number of characters involved was confusing, and secondly this book was narrated by Brian Glover rather than Colin Buchanan. I really like Me Glover as an actor and I can understand why they chose him. His accent is perfect. But he has a very odd way of delivering dialogue that sometimes made it very difficult to follow what was happening. It meant the book needed more concentration than usual and I use audio books specifically so I can be doing something else while listening. I only persisted out of a desire to fill in gaps in the path of the relationships within the series.
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Published by Harper Collins in 1973 this neat mystery captures a time of change both in the times and in the lives of Chief Superintendent Andy Dazliel, Peter Pascoe, and Eleanor Soper. This time two cases, one a homicide that involves friends of Pascoe, the other a series of thefts in Mid Yorkshire, are brought to a successful conclusion by the thoughtful Pascoe and the instinctive Dazliel.
