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| A Cure for All Diseases | 
 enlarge | Author: Reginald Hill
Creators: Kati Nicholl, Colin Buchanan
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Category: Book
This item is no longer available
Avg. Customer Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 3393063
Edition: Abridged, Windows Media Ed
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
ISBN: 0007270623
EAN: 9780007270620
ASIN: 0007270623
Publication Date: March 3, 2008
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| Customer Reviews: Read 29 more reviews...
 Too clever by half! November 5, 2008
I am a great fan of the Dalziel and Pascoe books by Reginald Hill. So as other fans of the charactrs have already said I too was greatly looking forward to catching up on the latest escapades from our 'Heroes'.
Sad to report, I was bitterly dissapointed with this book.
It was a cross between a Victorian style Jane Austen 'Dear Diary' format and the bluster of Andy Dalziel of mid Yorkshires finest.
I found the very large chunks of the book given over to the emails.....did I say emails! I mean tomes between psycholigist Charlotte Heywood and her sister 'somewhere in Africa' tedious and slowed the plot down. I realise it was used to build a theme for the books, but surely there could have been some other way of doing this or at least cut down the emails. Nobody sends stuff of that length by email surley .
I feel maybe Reginald Hill, needs to think carefully, about how he writes the next Dalziel and Pascoe novel or he will lose a lot of readers who quite frankly will be bored.
Keep the intellectual aspirations out of your Detective novels Reg'! Save it for your other books.
Failed experiment November 2, 2008
I'm only half-way through this book (having read all previous Reg Hill books) and can say that I nearly abandoned it. The first part, which is almost all in the form of email correspondence, is far too lengthy - I don't care if it's setting the scene, I was constantly waiting for something to happen.
My main complaint is the lack of punctuation in the emails - I use emails every day and can't understand why we have to have a separate grammatical style for them. The word 'shed' primariliy conveys a wooden building at the bottom of the garden; but not in these emails - it's actually 'she'd' without the apostrophe. (Other examples - wed, im, couldnt, hed, hes etc). WHY? It annoyed me intensely and reduced my enjoyment of the book. Does Mr Hill think that to emphasise the email style all he has to do is omit apostrophes?
I have now just reached part 2, which I see is written in Mr Hill's usual style and I shall continue to the end.
Mind you, having said all the above, should Mr Hill write and publish another book - I will almost certainly buy it!
 Wow - much better than I expected October 21, 2008
Having seen some of the negative comments about this book I came to it with pretty low expectations. I know, through reading some of the more recent D&P (Dalziel & Pascoe) novels, that Reginald Hill can sometimes alienate the reader when he trys to be too clever in his style but thought that in this book his inventive approach to story telling worked very well.
Yes, a lot of the story is told through emails, sent by one of the characters to her sister, which some reviewers find hard to read due to the poor grammar and spelling. I personally had no problem with this - in fact the spelling and grammar was actually much better than in the majority of emails that I receive on a daily basis.
A large chunk of the book is also told through the thoughts of Dalziel. I really enjoyed these sections as they contained some of the gems of humour that for me make D&P novels stand out way in front of the majoority of crime-fiction.
The ending does possibly get a little convoluted and far fetched, while still managing to end tied up rather too neatly, but by God it was entertaining getting there.
Fully recommended!
 Hill, like Dalziel seems to be recovering October 20, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
After the excellent "On Beulah Height", it seemed to me that Reginald Hill went a bit experimental. In my opinion "Arms and the Women", "Dialogues of the Dead" and "Death's Jest Book" really didn't work. I prefer my detective stories to be a bit more straightforward even though I applaud Mr Hill's effort and lack of complacency.
However in this case I had absolutely no problem with the slightly altered format. What we have here is more of an Agatha Christie story than a police procedural. The first part has one person behaving particularly badly and motives being revealed before anything has happened. The victim is really no surprise when the murder final comes. Thereafter come the usual twists and turns before the final denouement.
The story is told from three perspectives. Emails sent to her sister from the character Charley Heywood, Andy Dalziel's MP3 diary and normal third person narrative. The emails take a little getting used to, but are worth it. The character of Charley Heywood is interesting and the emails are very humourous. This technique is a good way for the readers to see the dynamics of the characters as a prelude to the murder. The use of Andy's audio diary means you get far more fat man for your money. What Dalziel and Pascoe fan could complain about that?
I found the whole thing thoroughly enjoyable and read it in a couple of sittings. It's typical Hill with jokes and literary references everywhere. It's not perfect however, hence four stars. The plot is not one of his best. I mentioned earlier the similarity to Agatha Christie. Here Pascoe is almost reduced to the bumbling detective chasing red herrings and I think he deserves better.
 What a disappointment September 26, 2008
I had this shipped out to me in Borneo and was really looking forward to another of Reginald Hill's excellent D&P books. But try as I might I cannot bring myself to finish it. Like other reviewers I found the lengthy e-mails, which lack both punctuation and grammar, quite unreadable; surely no one actually writes e-mails like that, or am I really out of touch with the communication skills of young graduates? Meanwhile it's still on the bookcase. Perhaps some kind soul will "borrow" it one day and make space for the next from Mr Hill which can only be an improvement.
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