Not much to say about Proven Guilty, Jim Butcher's 8th Harry Dresden novel, since I'm only about halfway through, except to say that it's proof that even the pulpiest authors can improve. One of my pet peeves with the series has been Butcher's tendency to throw out pet phrases until they become irritating -- "Hell's Bells" is probably the chief offender. So imagine my surprise to be more than halfway through the book and only had one "Hell's Bells" and none of the other annoying phrases.
The stuff that Butcher is actually good at -- the plotting -- has fortunately not changed.
Reginald Hill has been an author who I've lauded in the past for his willingness to change, and Dialogues of the Dead shows that willingness in spades. Although it's part of the Dalziel/Pascoe series, Hill spends most of the novel with a new recruit to the force, "Hat" Bowler. Although Dalziel and Pascoe are important to the book, Bowler is really the central player. In a way, Hill is revisiting themes from early on, with Bowler playing a similar role to the early Pascoe, as a college graduate trying to cope with Dalziel. But Bowler is more than a Pascoe stand-in. He is not an intellectual they way Pascoe is, and is more aggressive about going around Dalziel.
At the same time, he provides some of the sparks that the Pascoe/Dalziel relationship used to have, before Pascoe matured, and before Hill began to wear away some of Dalziel's rough edges. Hill has also matured, and the struggle is rendered more subtly than the early Pascoe/Dalziel books.
In addition to confounding our expectations about the series characters, Hill has completely up-ended the typical closure of a whodunnit. I'm not sure if I approve -- he's still never really dealt with the thread left over from Dead Heads, the closest equivalent in his previous work. But it's a bold move, and it'll be interesting to see where he takes relationships in the next book or two.
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