New Dalziel and Pascoe novel from Britain's finest male crime writer: 'Reginald Hill stands head and shoulders above any other writer of homebred crime fiction' Tom Hiney, Observer In the Beginning was the Word! A man drowns. Another dies in a motorbike crash. Two accidents! yet in a pair of so-called Dialogues sent to the Mid-Yorkshire Gazette as entries in a short story competition, someone seems to be claiming responsibility for the deaths. In Mid-Yorkshire CID the word is heard but not believed. But when the story is leaked to television and a third indisputable murder takes place, Dalziel and Pascoe find themselves playing a game no-one knows the rules of against an opponent known only as the Wordman.