Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel investigates a murder close to home in this first crime novel featuring the much-loved detective team of Dalziel and Pascoe. ‘So far out in front that he need not bother looking over his shoulder’ Sunday Telegraph

Home from the rugby club after taking a nasty knock in a match, Sam Connon finds his wife more uncommunicative than usual. After passing out on his bed for a few hours, he comes downstairs to discover communication has been cut off forever – by a hole in the middle of her forehead. Andy Dalziel, a long-standing member of the club, wants to run the murder investigation along his own lines. But DS Peter Pascoe’s loyalties lie elsewhere and he has quite different ideas about how the case should proceed…

Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel investigates murder close to home in this first crime novel featuring the much-loved detective team of Dalziel and Pascoe. • Reginald Hill was best known for his crime novels about Dalziel and Pascoe, which were adapted for BBC television from 1996 to 2007. •10 million-rated hit BBC TV series • A Clubbable Woman is the first book in the Dalziel and Pascoe series. • Reginald Hill was born 3 April 1936; died 12 January 2012 • Hill won the Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger award (for Bones and Silence) in 1990. Won the Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement in 1995. • Also wrote under pen names: Patrick Ruell, Dick Morland, Charles Underhill Competition: vera stanhope; dci banks; john rebus. ann cleeves; lj ross; peter robinson; val mcdermid; ian rankin