British crime novelist Reginald Hill died Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012 after a long battle with cancer. The author of a series of novels featuring Yorkshire police detectives Andrew Dalziel and Peter Pascoe, Hill was recognized by Great Britain’s Crime Writers Association with both its 1990 Gold Dagger and its 1995 Diamond Dagger awards.
Commenting in London’s Guardian yesterday, Jan. 13, Hill’s colleague Mark Billingham described the death of the 75-year-old writer as "tragic, not only because he was an amazing writer, still working at the height of his powers, but also because he was one of the most lovely men you could ever meet. He was someone I looked up to enormously as a writer and a man."
Fellow writer Ian Rankin also praised Hill’s work, saying, "I didn't read crime fiction until I was in my 20s ... Hill was one of the first British writers I read. His plotting was elegant and his characters were larger than life – once you read about Andy Dalziel he's never forgotten."
Born April 3, 1936 in Hartlepool, Durham, Hill wrote his first Dalziel and Pascoe novel, A Clubbable Woman, in 1970. Almost four decades later, the 24th and last book in this series, Midnight Fugue (2009), appeared.
The BBC adapted Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe series for television in 1996. It ran for 12 seasons (1996-2007) with Warren Clarke in the role of Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel and Colin Buchanan as Detective Inspector Peter Pascoe.
Hill authored a second series as well. His five Joe Sixsmith novels (1993-2008) feature a black private investigator working out of Luton, Eng. Hill also wrote many standalone titles, both under his own name and under such pseudonyms as Patrick Ruell, Dick Morland and Charles Underhill.
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