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Find Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill in our catalog.

The other day I had a request for other traditional British police procedurals like the series by Reginald Hill about Yorkshire detectives Dalziel and Pascoe. You may have seen the adaptions of some of these books on TV.

Though this series is a fairly classic police procedural, it can in no way be considered cozy. Hill's series is set in the industrialized north, which is in economic decay, and life is hard. In solving crimes, the police partners play off each other. Dalziel is the inspector, a local, grass-rooots policeman who has been hardened by his background and what he has seen - and by what he has had to do to advance in the force. Some even consider him corrupt: his philosophy is do what it takes. Pascoe is his sergeant, younger, university educated and idealistic. He is the pair's moral compass and brings science to Dalziel's intuition and local knowledge.

Other books with burnt out policemen who bend the rules:

The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin (Try also other Inspector Rebus novels set in Edinburgh)
A Little White Death by John Lawton (Scotland Yard detective Frederick Troy - try also others in the series which chart Troy's rise to be Scotland Yard's chief of the murder squad)
Skeleton Hill by Peter Lovesey (Part of a series featuring policeman Peter Diamond, set in Bath, England)

You might also like these other British procedurals available in HCPL:
The Man With No Face by Peter Turnbull (Glasgow)
The Rottweiler by Ruth Rendell (London)
Gone Tomorrow: a Bill Slider Mystery by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
The Private Patient by P.D. James (Adam Dalgleish, Scotland Yard)

Non-British procedurals:
Still Life by Louise Penny (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec)
The Friend of Madame Maigret by Georges Simenon
This Night's Foul Work by Fred Vargas
The Girl of His Dreams by Donna Leon
The Pyramid : and four other Kurt Wallander mysteries by Henning Mankell