New Dalziel and Pascoe novel from Britain's finest male crime '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.