The Woodcutter

by Reginald Hill Narrated by Jonathan Keeble

Overview

Wolf Hadda's life was a fairytale - successful businessman and adored husband. But a knock on the door one morning ends it all. Universally reviled, thrown into prison, Wolf retreats into silence. Seven years later Wolf begins to talk to the prison psychiatrist and receives parole to return home. But there's a mysterious period in Wolf's past when he was known as the Woodcutter. Now the Woodcutter is back, looking for truth and revenge...

Editorial Reviews

Marilyn Stasio

Those blood-lusty Jacobean dramatists could have picked up a few pointers about betrayal and revenge from Reginald Hill, who turns a contemporary crime of greed into a timeless morality tale in The Woodcutter.
—The New York Times

Literary Review

Reginald Hill’s books are as good as crime fiction gets and this one is as good as he gets.

Keighley News (England)

His storytelling is always bewitching, his turns of phrase wonderful. . . . The Woodcutter is as much literary as crime novel, but always a page turner.

The Age (Melbourne)

A consummate yarn spinner, Hill draws on myth and metaphor to embroider this tightly crafted tale.

Daily Telegraph (London)

Hill’s plotting…is brilliant, the jokes first-rate, the prose supple: it’s his humble awe at the power of the English language that enables him to be a minor master of it.

The Evening Standard (London)

There is something of the fairytale about The Woodcutter, a big, fat mystery which has the enduring power of a myth. . . . The heights of the Dalziel & Pascoe series aside, Hill has never written a better book.

The Times (London)

An outstanding novel of force and beauty.

Herald Sun (Australia)

Another gem from the creator of Dalziel and Pascoe. Rich characterisation, sparkling dialogue and wry humour flavour the text. . . . Verdict: exquisite

Financial Times

He’s lost none of his sardonic wit, punch and complexity… The result is an epic, unbeatable mystery.

People magazine on The Woodcutter

[A] tour de force.

Wall Street Journal on The Woodcutter

Evokes the spirit of storytellers from Dumas and Dickens to Jeffery Deaver and Jeffrey Archer.

New York Times Book Review on The Woodcutter

Reginald Hill…turns a contemporary crime of greed into a timeless morality tale….Hill’s storytelling is its own delight, a fun house of shifting timelines and multiple perspectives.

Wall Street Journal

Evokes the spirit of storytellers from Dumas and Dickens to Jeffery Deaver and Jeffrey Archer.

New York Times Book Review

Reginald Hill…turns a contemporary crime of greed into a timeless morality tale….Hill’s storytelling is its own delight, a fun house of shifting timelines and multiple perspectives.

People

[A] tour de force.

Library Journal

A Cumbrian woodcutter's son, Wolf Hadda is now a high-profile entrepreneur with a beloved wife in the bargain. Then he's thrown into jail for charges he denies and is abandoned by everyone. When he returns home seven years later, he's in the mood for revenge. A Cartier Diamond Dagger award winner noted for his popular Dalziel & Pascoe series, Hill here offers a stand-alone. Of interest to the thriller set; with a 25,000-copy first printing.

JULY 2011 - AudioFile

A devastating accusation, a crippling accident, and a lengthy prison sentence leave once successful Wolf Hadda with nothing but Alva, a diligent court-appointed psychiatrist, and an overwhelming anger. Upon release from prison, Wolf sets out to right the wrongs done to him. In a departure from his Dalziel and Pascoe series, Reginald Hill offers a complex, utterly engrossing stand-alone novel with the strange, magical undertones of a fairy tale. There are some narrators’ voices that insist you listen. Jonathan Keeble has such a voice. From his first words, listeners are caught and held, whether he’s delivering Wolf’s fierce journal entries, Wolf's exchanges with Alva, action-packed moments of terror, or bits of dazzling dialogue. Keeble is chilling in his narration of Hill’s literate psychological novel. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

A grim-dandy psychological thriller about betrayal and revenge set in England.

Sir Wilfred Hadda has risen far from his humble days as a woodcutter's son. Nicknamed both Wilf and Wolf, it's the latter that follows him throughout the story. He's handsome, rich, well-connected and married to a gorgeous upper-class woman. What more could a man want? Oh wait, there's someone at the door. The authorities arrive with a warrant, something about fraud and child pornography. In a panic at the false accusations, Wolf foolishly bolts into London traffic, with macabre consequences that are not for the squeamish reader. As an accused and apparently proven child molester, the tabloids crucify and the court convicts him. His trusted friend/lawyer abandons him, his wife divorces him, his business goes belly-up and he lands in prison. Only his physical toughness protects him from his pedophile-loathing fellow convicts. He simply cannot sink lower. The Swedish-Nigerian psychiatrist Alva Ozigbo (a beautiful woman, of course) tries to persuade him to face up to his obvious guilt. He vehemently protests his innocence, though admitting guilt may shorten his sentence. Years later he is released, but he is a pariah in the Cumbrian village where he was raised and chooses to return. He just wants to become a simple woodcutter, though he has questions for which he hires a private investigator. The answers may take a while, the P.I. tells him; what will you be doing in the meantime? "Sharpening my axe," Wolf replies. Clearly, he had been set up. But by whom, and why? And what will he do about it? Doctor Ozigbo plays an intriguing secondary role as Wolf navigates the many dangerous twists and untangles the deceit that dates back for a generation.

Near the end, a character refers to the fate of "the dreadful, drab English." There's nothing drab about this dark and compelling novel,although some of its characters are dreadful human beings.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171568108
Publisher:	W. F. Howes Ltd
Publication date:	01/01/2011
Edition description:	Unabridged

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