From his well-loved detective duo, DCI Dalziel and DI Pascoe to his own reimagining of Sherlock Holmes, Reginald Hill’s unforgettable characters and unique blend of humour and suspense make him one of Britain’s greatest crime writers. Complete with a foreword by Mick Herron, this collection of short stories showcases the very best of this iconic mystery writer.

My first encounter with Reginald Hill’s writing was on 27th November 2025, when I read his story ‘The Running Of The Deer’ in the ‘Christmas Stalkings’ collection. I bought ‘A Candle For Christmas’ the same day. I’ve been dipping into it every day since. It’s been a very rewarding experience.

Reginald Hill is a great storyteller. I love his dark imagination, his gruff Yorkshire humour, and his skill at misdirecting my attention so that most stories end with a surprise. Most of all, I admire his ability to bring his characters to life.

The tales in this collection range from police procedural to historical fiction. The Christmas stories that bookend this collection were a delight. The stories in between ranged from the disturbing to the amusing. Each of them was beautifully put together.

I foresee a lot more Reginal Hill in my reading future.

I’ve rated and commented on each story below. I hope the comments encourage you to read this collection.

A CANDLE FOR CHRISTMAS ★★★★

This was masterfully done. The plot alone would have made this a memorable story. There were twists and surprises throughout, making me reconsider what i thought I knew. 

Yet it was the people, not the plot, that drove this story. Reginald Hill went beyond having the reader choose between the contrasting styles and conflicting vales between Dalziel and Pascoe. He made the people involved in the case complex. They weren’t just plot devices, their emotions, motives and relationships were all complicated. They were people with problems and flaws. People you could sympathise with, be angry with and be uncertain whether or not to believe all at the same time. 

The icing on the cake was the final scene of the story, where Dalziel has dinner with the Pascoe family at their home a few days after Christmas. It was a charming, intimate portrait in which Dalziel was cast in a different light by his relationship with Pascoe’s young daughter, Rosie, who adores her ‘Uncle’ Andy. After a case filled with violence and abuse, this intimate family scene, linked by the symbolism of a candle, offered a reminder that all of us are more complicated than we sometimes seem and that there is always a possibility of hope if we leave ourselves open to it.

A SHAMEFUL EATING ★★★★

A wonderfully creepy story about the survivors of a shipwreck. This was like reading something by Robert Louis Stevenson channeling Edgar Alan Poe. A powerful historical fiction horror story.

BROTHER’S KEEPER ★★★

This seemed like a straightforward story. I knew exactéy where it was going.. until it went somewhere else. This starts grounded in an orderly reality that slides slowly towards chaos, all the while distracting me from what was really happening. The ending me me grin in a rueful way.

SILENT NIGHT ★★★★

A beuatifully done, orginal, emotionally engaging Christmas Eve ghost story, set in a small English village.

THE BOY AND MAN BOOKER ★★★★

What started as a witty swipe at the pomposity of the Booker Prize, the mix of predation and sycophancy that defines the agent/writer relationship and the high-strung egos of authors, became more than a satire as I spent time inside the unpleasant mind of Boy David, a nervous but arrogant writer, blinded to his own narcissism and misogyny by an interior monologue dedicated to polishing his high opinion of his own brilliance. I hated him by the time the threats started. The ending was clever, surprising and left me smiling. 

THE ITALIAN SHERLOCK HOLMES ★★★

The tone of this Sherlock Holmes pastiche was pitch perfect. The setting was exotic. The locked-room plot was fun. I was disappointed that, in the end, Holmes did little to affect the outcome.

THE GAME OF DOG ★★★

A truly ingenious idea for the perfect murder, wrapped up bleak, male Yorkshire humour that changes it from a devilish plot into something almost whimsical.

THE MAN WHO DEFENESTRATED HIS SISTER ★★★

This started as what felt like a light-hearted piece of Victorian era crime fiction. Then it transformed into an intriguing puzzle of the kind Sherlock might have enjoyed solving. Then the realities of class and institutional power came to dominate the story, leading to an ending that was surprising, orginal and chilling.

URBAN LEGEND ★★★

An ingenious twist on urban legends. This one is a true story, told by someone who was there. What the truth was still took me by surprise.

WHERE ARE ALL THE NAUGHTY PEOPLE? ★★★★★

This is a superb horror story – made more horrifying because, despite the crucial moments taking place in a graveyard and a crypt at night, there’s nothing supernatural going on – just people being people. At first, the story is told as the narrator remembers seeing it when he was a curious, naturally solitary, impressionable eight-year-old with the graveyard next to his house as his playground. Then the story moves to the present day, with the narrator in his fifties, finally being forced to apply an adult’s understanding to what he saw back then. It’s a sad story about a damaged life. Even so, I didn’t understand the totality of the damage or its cause until the chilling end of the story. 

THE DIFFERENCE ★★★★

A dark imagination, a talent for misdirection, accessible atmospheric prose and a grounding in real life makes this a story the perfectly demonstrates Reginald Hills talents. An egaging story with a sting in the tale that changed my perception of everything I though I’d understood.

Then there’s this great opening paragraph:

“A good day for a funeral. Dark clouds, sagging like black drapes. Atmosphere chill and damp, a gusting breeze tugging at hair and clothes like a child’s fingers. The others move away, leaving me alone by the grave. Death is a time for doubt, a time to review missed opportunities, unspoken words. I had the opportunity to speak, and I didn’t take it. Was I right or wrong? Would it have made any difference? The funeral’s over which suggests it hardly matters.”

ON THE PSYCHIATRIST’S COUCH ★★★★

It’s not easy to write an engaging story told entirely in the first person by someone addressing a person who remains silent throughout, but Reginal Hill pulls it off. The narrator is a convicted serial killer talking to a psychologist. We get the killer’s entire life story. He’s at pains to sound rational and of sound mind. The longer he talked, the more my sense that something bad was happening grew. The story, once again, had a sting in the tail.

ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS ★★★★★

A perfect ending to this collection. Reginald Hill packs in a whole novel’s worth of plot twists to this short story about a newborn baby abducted on Christmas morning. This is the stuff that the best Christmas Specials are made of. Dalziel, Pascoe and Wieldy hack their way through an undergrowth of distractions to track down the baby and his abductors, ending with a dramatic chase in the darkness through the deep snow of rural Yorkshire. The ending is spectacular. The humour is muscular but somehow cheery. An excellent Christmas tale.