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THE ROAR OF THE BUTTERFLIES
by Reginald Hill
Harper, December 2008
313 pages
7.99 GBP
ISBN: 0007252749


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Reginald Hill is an extremely erudite man, just in case any readers out there are not aware of the fact. No doubt most people would, on hearing his name, immediately think "Dalziel and Pascoe" but if they have never met PI Joe Sixsmith, they are in for a treat.

Joe is in his office, attempting to make the heat a bit more bearable by sleeping and indulging in pleasant dreams about his girlfriend and icebergs, when someone he immediately dubs a "Young Fair God" charges into his office in search of help. The newcomer announces that he is Christian Porphyry and he is in desperate need of Joe's aid. Detective Superintendent Willie Woodbine had told Porphyry that Joe would be able to untangle the mess in which he finds himself and set him back upon the karmic road which his birth had intended him to follow.

After Porphyry's departure, having enjoined Joe to join him at the Hoo the next day, Joe puzzles about what it might all mean. Woodbine rings him and Joe learns Chris has got himself into "a bit of bother" at the Royal Hoo Golf Club. Joe is delightfully naive when it comes to both golf clubs and the game itself. Thus, when he finally manages to find and enter the Hoo, on being questioned by various people Porphyry thinks, mistakenly, are his friends, Joe proclaims he is a scratch golfer.

Joe eventually learns that Christian has been accused of cheating. Obviously, someone as transparent as Chris could not be guilty of any such crime but why are some people certain of his guilt - and why are some people attempting to get Joe out of the country?

Anyone familiar with exclusive golf clubs through whose doors no one of the wrong social position, race, or religion would dare intrude will no doubt have a lot of fun with this book. Of course, most of the characters could more truthfully be described as caricatures, but the plot is good and the entire book will have the reader chortling.

It is, perhaps, not pushing the bounds of possibility too far to think that this adventure might just occur in the real world at some time. Or perhaps it might even have happened, given the nature of some golf clubs, but Joe Sixsmith (and Reginald Hill) make a rollicking, very funny adventure.

Hill paints Joe as thinking himself without much of a clue, but obviously Joe has a great deal of natural talent - and, of course, he has his lovely girlfriend Beryl Boddington to help him out of some of the corners into which his ignorance paints him.

There's no graphic sex to enhance (or spoil) the pages of the novel but my goodness, what a great deal of pleasure for readers lies in the pages of this little book.

Reviewed by Denise Pickles, February 2009

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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