Born Guilty (U) (Ulverscroft Large Print Series) - Hardcover

Reginald Hill was brought up in Cumbria, and has returned there after many years in Yorkshire. With his first crime novel, A Clubbable Woman, he was hailed as 'the crime novel's best hope' and twenty years on he has more than fulfilled that prophecy.

Hill has produced nearly three dozen novels, generating critical acclaim and a host of loyal fans who will find his newest hero, Joe Sixsmith, among mysterydom's most unique and eccentric characters. Joe is a redundant British lathe operator, black, balding, decidedly middle-aged, and ever at the mercy of his curmudgeonly aunt Mirabelle and his nearly human cat, Whitey, who thrives on a diet of pork rinds and beer and keeps Joe on the straight and narrow. In his latest adventure, following Blood Sympathy , Joe leaves choir practice and takes a shortcut through the church graveyard, where he makes a grisly discovery--a young boy's body jammed into a box among the gravestones. Although the local coppers dismiss the case as an unfortunate drug overdose, Joe can't get the boy out of his mind. Poking and probing among the village's down-and-outs as well as its upper crust, Joe keeps at it until he discovers the shocking secrets of some of the town's most prominent citizens. A blend of Chaplin and Clouseau, Joe Sixsmith is endearingly funny, but he also has an unerring knack for discovering some of life's most serious truths in the midst of his bumbling misadventures. An outstanding read. Emily Melton