REGINALD HILL
DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD
A Dalziel and Pascoe novel
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain
in 2001 by HarperCollins
Copyright © Reginald Hill 2001
Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007313198
Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN 9780007396368
Version: 2015-06-22
Contents
Copyright
Chapter One: the first dialogue
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four: the second dialogue
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine: the third dialogue
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen: the fourth dialogue
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four: the fifth dialogue
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six: the sixth dialogue
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two: the seventh dialogue
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight: the last dialogue
About the Author
Praise for Dialogues of the Dead
By Reginald Hill
About the Publisher
paronomania (pəronə
1. A clinical obsession with word games.
1760 George, Lord LYTTELTON Dialogues of the Dead: No XXXV BACON: Is not yon fellow lying there Shakespeare, the scribbler? Why looks he so pale? GALEN: Aye, sir, ’tis he. A very pretty case of paronomania. Since coming here he has resolved a cryptogram in his plays which proves that you wrote them, since when he has not spoken word. 1823 Ld. BYRON Don Juan Canto xviii So paronomastic are his miscellanea, Hood’s doctors fear he’ll die of paronomania. 1927 HAL DILLINGER Through the Mind-Maze: A Casebook So advanced was Mr X’s paronomania that he attempted to kill his wife because of a message he claimed to have received via a cryptic clue in the Washington Post crossword.
2. The proprietary name of a board game for two players using tiles imprinted with letters to form words. Points are scored partly by addition of the numeric values accorded to each letter, but also as a result of certain relationships of sound and meaning between the words. All languages transcribable in Latin script may be used under certain variable rules.
1976