Quiet gentleman in a chaotic world (From York Press)

Quiet gentleman in a chaotic world

9:00am Thursday 26th January 2012 in Columnists By Julian Cole

REGINALD Hill was a lovely man, everyone says so. I met him only once and can concur, even if he did tease me about my suit.

Hill was the star turn for one year’s Harrogate crime-writing festival. I was there as a journalist and small-time writer of crime novels. The room we were in was hot, crowded and noisy.

In many ways, Hill cut an unlikely figure as one of this country’s most successful crime writers, creator of the Dalziel and Pascoe novels, and much more besides. As one of the obituaries put it last week, he could “almost have passed as an absent-minded academic or a country parson”.

That was how he seemed in a room bursting with writers, most of whom would have been happy to have the spotlight pointed in their direction. Hill was more the sort to watch and sip wine, Cloudy Bay being his tipple.

In the time we chatted, perhaps for ten minutes or so, he was delightful and amusing, canny and wry. I had interviewed him before the festival by email. When the replies arrived, each answer sparkled with wit.

Why did he think people loved crime books so much, I asked in one question? “Violence, sudden death, greed, lust, rage, butchery – what’s not to love? Seriously, crime novels present a disturbing part of the chaos of contemporary life in a palatable form, as a narrative with a beginning, middle and end, and as a puzzle that can be solved.”

Other replies concerned his playful love of language and his mischievous liking for obscure words. If his searches of the dictionary proved futile, invention took over.

“Very occasionally if I can’t find the right word for something, I will invent one that I think ought to exist,” Hill said.

“But as I say, this is a game between consenting adults and both sides have got to be enjoying it.”

Equally playful was his parting wish that the Dalziel and Pascoe novels could be turned into an opera.

“I can see Bryn Terfel making a splendid Dalziel and perhaps Ian Bostridge could do Pascoe with Katherine Jenkins as Ellie (I know; wrong colouring, but she’s just so gorgeous…) Anyone know a good composer?,” he wrote.

That desire remained unfulfilled, but by most other measures Reginald Hill was tremendously successful, writing more than 50 books, with standalone thrillers interspersing his Dalziel and Pascoe books.

His novels are very English, packed with strong characters and good jokes; they are written with precision and elegance, and cerebral depths lie beneath the fast-moving surface.

If I could pass on one useful tip in life, it would be to read Reginald Hill. The Dalziel and Pascoe books boast a great double act: Fat Andy is all rough charm and guile, while partner Pascoe is a slightly prissy university boy. Real passion, anger and affection spark through their unlikely relationship.

The individual novels are very good, too. One of Hill’s last novels, The Woodcutter, was beautifully written, utterly engaging and a very fine crime novel indeed.

Reginald Hill is no longer with us, dead from a brain tumour at the age of 75.

But in my mind, he is still across the room from me in Harrogate, bearded and bright, gentle and gentlemanly, and offering kind words of encouragement.

And then he teased me about the suit.

“You used to be able to tell the journalists because they were the scruffy ones,” he said and twinkled off in another direction.

Interviewed later on stage by John Banville, a writer who mixes “literary” fiction with crime, Hill was asked about the difference between the two forms. His reply was typical and lovely.

“When I get up in the morning, I ask my wife whether I should write a Booker Prize-winning novel, or another bestselling crime book. We always come down on the side of the crime book.”

Some deaths seem particularly sad, and so it is with Reginald Hill. At least this son of County Durham, long-time inhabitant of his beloved Cumbria, and creator of one of modern literature’s great Yorkshiremen, lives on in his books.