Fans of Dalziel and Pascoe who might wonder how this unlikely pair ever got together will have their curiosity satisfied by reading “The Last National Service Man” in this collection of four stories. Dalziel is the fat detective who can “consume malt whiskey at a rate which had caused the waiter to summon his work-mates to view the spectacle,” and Pascoe his more intellectual and skeptical colleague. They make an odd couple that consistently amuse while solving crimes.Dalziel reminds one of the wonderful Inspector Dover of Joyce Porter. They are both uncouth, fat, and lazy except that Dalziel is truly bright and manipulative. He actually solves crimes, unlike Dover, who stumbles on to the correct solution. Pascoe, his love/hate relationship Oxfordeducated subordinate, who uses words like hydriotaphic and philopolemic.
My favorite story, if one can have favorites, is Ghost." There are three main causes of ghosts, relates Dalziel, our expert, at a dinner party: “One: bad cooking. Two: bad ventilation. Three: bad conscience." Since the air conditioning was just recently installed and the housewife is known for her good cooking, only one option was left and Dalziel, to Pascoe’s consternation, agrees to check out the ghost. Dalziel, as usual, has something else up his sleeve, which he has to hide from Pascoe, whom he sends on a wild cat chase.
Another story, uncharacteristically, takes place in the year 2010. An astronaut, stepping off his lunar module, falls to the surface uttering the unfinished phrase, Oh mer… There is rampant speculation in the press as to what he meant to say, the religious insisting it had to
be Oh mère de Dieu. A surprising exclamation for a lifetime member of the Société Athéiste et Humaniste de France. The French newspapers realized, of course, that he was merely exclaiming what any civilized frog would under the circumstances: Oh merde. The murder was accomplished in a shocking fashion.
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His TEC (Total Environment Costume) had been tampered with. “The mìcrocircuitry of the residual products unit of his TEC had been deliberately cross-linked with both the main and the reserve power systems in such a manner that it needed only the addition of a conductive element, in this case Iiquescent, to complete the circuit with unfortunate, that is, fatal, consequences." Heh, heh.
