Book Review: Beyond the bone, by Reginald Hill

Posted on July 22, 2021 by Richard H. McBee Jr.

Beyond the Bone by Reginald Hill

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Author Reginald Hill caught my attention and my interest with just the name of his heroine Zeugma, when, in the first sentence of Chapter number 2 of the book, he uses a zeugma to describe the March day in which she finds a skeleton. The British witticisms throughout the book are also a tribute to the author’s keen sense of humor when writing about the murders in descriptions of finely tuned prose. The story begins with the finding of the skeleton, but soon begins to revolve around a fresh murder and the disappearance of Zeugma’s mentor and guardian, Leo Pasquino. Into the complicated picture come Lakenheath, a real estate broker, the mysterious Egyptian family, the Upas, and a strange man who goes by the single word moniker of Crow. Crow dashes across the moors accompanied by his dog Twinkle and lives in a rebuilt stoneage hovel out on the undeveloped land of the county known as the waste. Readers may find that they get halfway through the first half of the book questioning whether there is actually a complex mystery story here, or whether we are just dealing with a series of unrelated incidents. In the latter half of the book, the plot begins to gel and Zeugma has to fall back on her training from Whitethorn girl’s school in order to stay alive and solve the final mystery. Definitely not what I expected and the book is certainly entertaining and well worth the read.

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