An Advancement of Learning

Ten years since it was first published in hardback, and now for the first time as an eBook, this volume of short stories by the cream of British crime writing talent celebrates 75 years of the quintessential Detection Club.The Detection Club represents the cream of British crime writing talent. Founded on the cusp of the 1930s, the Club’s first President was G.K. Chesterton, and since then the mantle of Presidency has passed to some of the most significant names inthe history of crime fiction,...

‘Hill is an instinctive and complete novelist who is blessed with a spontaneous storytelling gift’ Frances Fyfield, Mail on SundayIf you’ve already met Dalziel and Pascoe, you’re in for a treat. If you haven’t yet had the pleasure, you’re in for a revelation! Here in four stories we track their partnership from curtain-up to last act; from the mean streets of Mid-Yorkshire to the mountains of the moon.The Last National Service Man reveals the truth, hitherto buried in police files, of their...

‘So far out in front that he need not bother looking over his shoulder’ Sunday TelegraphThe balding policeman on Trudi Adamson’s doorstep brings the worst news possible: her husband Trent has been burned to death in a freak car accident.Suddenly a widow after years of marriage, Trudi soon discovers there’s a lot she didn’t know about her late husband. Why did he resign from his job without telling her? And where is all his money?As shock piles upon shock, Trudi is forced to re-examine her belief...

‘One of Britain’s most consistently excellent crime novelists’ Marcel Berlins, The Times ‘[Reginald Hill] keeps one on the edge of one’s wits throughout a bitterly enthralling detection thriller’ Sunday TimesWhen a four-year-old child is abducted from an Essex kindergarten, Detective Inspector Dog Cicero soon realizes that this is no routine investigation.Something about the child’s mother troubles him. Maybe it’s the fact that she comes from Derry, and Cicero’s Northern Ireland scars go deeper...

‘One of Britain’s most consistently excellent crime novelists’ Marcel Berlins, The TimesA friendship renewed; a marriage going sour; Harry Bentick heads for the Lake District not knowing if he’s going in search of something or running away.Then two girls are found murdered in the high fells, and suddenly there’s no doubt about it.He’s running.Set in his native Cumberland, this was Reginald Hill’s very first novel, a unique blend of detective story, psychological thriller and Buchanesque...

A stunning psychological thriller set in Cumbria past and present, from the award-winning author of the Dalziel and Pascoe seriesThings move slowly in the tiny Cumbrian village of Illthwaite, but all that's about to change.Post-grad Sam Flood and historian Miguel Mercado first meet at The Stranger House, Illwaithe’s local inn. Sam is there to find information on her grandmother, who left four decades before, while Mig’s research stretches back to the English Reformation, four centuries ago.The...