Hill's new book of the dead

Death's Jest-Book is not only the latest episode in the long-running saga of Superintendent Dalziel and Inspector Pascoe, the Laurel and Hardy of the Mid-Yorkshire police force. It's also a sequel to Reginald Hill's last book, Dialogues of the Dead, which itself picked up a character or two from even earlier episodes.

Most authors might feel the need to treat new readers to a quick summary of previous events, even perhaps a footnote or two. Since these are not forthcoming, Death's Jest-Book will be incomprehensible to all save the happy few who have the earlier novel by heart.

But even the most devoted fans of Dalziel and Pascoe might be a trifle gobsmacked by the gallimaufry stuffed between the covers of the new work. There's a perfunctory nod towards the conventional crime novel, in the shape of a plan to heist a priceless fourth century collection of jewellery, but this is soon hidden by Sergeant Wield's involvement with a half-Polish rent-boy; by librarian Rye Pomona's affair with DC Bowler, coupled with the remorse she feels for her previous actions; and, most of all, by a series of voluminous letters sent to Pascoe from an assortment of exotic locations by his old adversary, Franny Roote, now engaged in completing his deceased mentor's biography of the dramatist and poet TL Beddoes (1803-49), author of the play Death's Jest-Book, or the Fool's Tragedy.

Since each letter appears to confess to a criminal act - murder, arson and theft for starters - they turn Pascoe's obsession with Roote (whom he already believes responsible for most of the unsolved crimes on Mid-Yorkshire's patch) into an unhealthy monomania.

Lacking a plot framework, the book is held together thematically: Beddoes, Wield's young Pole and Pascoe's nemesis, Roote, all fatherless, are all seeking a surrogate parent to replace the one they have lost. Though this theme might do for Ulysses, crime novels need something less tenuous. Wilfully idiosyncratic and more than a touch self-indulgent, Death's Jest-Book is, nevertheless, like all Hill's work, a delight to read, written with a wit and appreciation of language rare, if not unique, in the genre.