An Advancement of Learning

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An Advancement of Learning

1971 | Crime

The second book in the Dalziel and Pascoe series sends the two mismatched Yorkshire policemen among university students, a group for which Andy Dalziel has no great love. In fact, when he hears a dead body has been found on the grounds of Holm Coultram College, he thinks of it as rather a good start. This is 1971, and the police force does not enjoy the warmest of relations with the Ivory Tower. Nevertheless, Dalziel takes himself to college, where the single corpse is followed by another and then another, until even Dalziel is forced to admit that someone is going after the academic community with rather excessive zeal.




Crime Whodunnit Police Procedural

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Phil Leader

Added this item on Nov 8, 2019

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Phil Leader (619 KP) rated

Nov 8, 2019  
An Advancement of Learning
An Advancement of Learning
Reginald Hill | 1971 | Crime
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When a body is discovered under a statue at college, gruff old hand Andy Dalziel and idealistic, learned Peter Pascoe arrive to investigate. Whereas Pascoe is very much at home in the surroundings of an institute of learning (and indeed bumps into an old acquaintance), Dalziel is highly dismissive of the students, if not downright abusive. This doesn't help the tensions during the socially active early 70s when this was written.

What follows is in some ways a standard police procedural and in others another step in the road of the development of the characters of the two policemen. This novel is really the one where it becomes clear that the mismatched duo don't fit the standard templates, with Hill clearly creating something special with the two of them.

The result is very much the prototype of the rest of the series: their characters develop, they solve a seemingly baffling crime and Dalziel provides a dash of humour with his acerbic and often old-fashioned outlook on life and those around him.