Pictures of Perfection by Reginald Hill
We’ve been looking at jumble sales in books, drifting also
into church fetes and village bazaars (many entries - this is the most recent, with links back). Unconnected, I’d been re-reading the
works of Reginald Hill – the Dalziel and Pascoe series – and
happen to have come to this one, which is wholly concerned with something
called the Day of Reckoning. There’s a small village, Enscombe, where
everything revolves round the Big House, and where there is a massive annual
celebration. The book opens (more or less) late on that day, with quite a major
event, then goes back a few days to show what led up to it. It sounds a bit
like Margery
Allingham’s Beckoning Lady, but Hill himself seems to be
channeling Jane Austen – a quote for every chapter, and various parallels. (It
might even resemble the Gaudy in Gaudy Night or The Counting of the Starkadders in Cold Comfort Farm)
Going back 20 years: I had read some of the early Hill
books, but had drifted away. Re-reading now I can see why – I found them trite,
not inventive, and full of weird misogyny and hearty nonsense. I didn’t (as you
might expect from such a feminist bolshy leftie as myself) particularly object to the lordly Dalziel – he is beyond
criticism, I enjoyed him – but I couldn’t get on with other aspects.
So then, in around 2000, I was living in the USA and went
to a talk by Laurie
King, a crime writer I very much admire. She was asked what
were her favourite crime books, and she named this one: she said it had the
right name, because it was the perfect mystery story. I was impressed and went
and bought the book, and loved it – but it didn’t feel as though it was by the
same person as some of the early ones. I picked up on the series and went
forward with it, and also slowly went back on those I had missed, so I read all of them, and will shortly have re-read all (more posts to follow…)
This one is on the lighter side, is funny and clever, and
has multiple plotlines which are going to intersect at the end on the Big Day
itself. There is crime and wickedness in it, but it is gentle and
life-affirming at the same time, in a way that is hard to describe. (Not all
Hill’s books have that feature by any means). This one has the maybe-valuable
pictures of the title – fakes, copies and swaps, always good in a crime novel. And
there are a lot of people in the book going to find out whom they really love
or changing their mind.
It feels as though it is going to teeter on the edge of
twee, as in this idealized Caldecott version of traditional village life:
and the description might sound that way, but it really isn’t.
For example, it doesn’t hold back on politics:
But they were not long, the
days of swine and Porsches. And by the early ’nineties the smartest pigs, those
who could still remember how to walk on two legs, were putting as much distance
as they could between themselves and the wrack of that frightful
image of perfection they had worshipped in vain…
[should that be 'wreck'? It's definitely wrack in the text]
There is one oddness in the book: a character says
‘What’s to explain? You’re a
free agent. Obligations, responsibilities, desert, what the hell do things
like that mean at Old Hall?’
It’s 'desert' that’s bothering me. And then it comes up
again:
‘And her
great desert some few years ago made me debate whether the time had
not come to cut through the old law of male primacy, bar the entail, and make
her my heir.’
Should it read desertion? Even that doesn’t wholly make
sense. Anyone with a better version please let me know.
The Reckoning doesn’t quite fit into our village fete theme. It is the day the tenants pay their rents, one by one, and ends in a giant feast. The lord of the manor traditionally then sings a ballad to the assembled villagers, which he eventually admits is a kind of retaliation. ‘The years I’ve spent listening to them droning on at fetes and shows and concerts and meetings…’
There will be more posts on Reginald Hill when I have
finished rereading his books…
The top picture from Wikimedia Commons seemed ideally suited to the post, although there is no information about it apart from the name, Lord of the Manor
File:Lord of the Manor (5378897578).jpg - Wikimedia Commons.jpg){kind=link}
Photo, Preparing for the Fete
File:Preparing
for the village fete (4) - geograph.org.uk - 1475010.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1475010.jpg){kind=link}
File:Preparing
for the village fete (2) - geograph.org.uk - 1475007.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1475007.jpg){kind=link}
Andy F / CC BY-SA 2.0
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