Joe Sixsmith rescues a woman from burning cottage and discovers who put her there

I like Joe Sixsmith, the main character. Parts of this book were a bit too introspective and made it bog down for me, esp. with the regional flavor and dialect which is a good thing but slows down the reading while I puzzle things out. I am sorry to hear about the the passing of Mr. Hill, he was a good writer. ( )

I have enormous affection for PI Joe Sixsmith. I like his modesty, his kindness, his humour, his bumbling method of solving crimes (personally I think he has more skill than he believes he does), the fact that the strongest language he will use is "shoot" despite his dedication to the teachings of a hard-boiled US detective whose name escapes me and last but not least the immensely entertaining regular secondary characters, particularly his feisty Aunt Mirabelle and cynical cat Whitey. Sadly, in this novel Whitey is left back in Luton while Joe gets into predictable levels of strife in the wild west, i.e. Wales.

Perhaps that's why I'm only awarding 3.5 stars. I miss Whitey. The story, while entertaining and engaging, is not as uniformly gripping as much of Reginald Hill's other work.

Nevertheless, I'm saddened by the awareness that due to the death of Mr Hill, this is the penultimate Joe Sixsmith novel. I might hold off on the last one for a while so as not to really have to say goodbye too soon. ( )

A Joe Sixsmith novel, where he travles to Wales for singing contest and gets dragged into all kinds of scrapes. Usual Reg Hill quality writing, without the sometimes showy prose of his Dalziel & Pascoe novels. ( )