A Pinch of Snuff (novel)

Last updated
A Pinch of Snuff
A Pinch of Snuff (novel) 1st edition cover art.jpg
First edition
Author Reginald Hill
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Series Dalziel and Pascoe series, #5
Genre crime novel
Publisher Collins Crime Club
Publication date
February 1978
Media typePrint (Hardcover)
Pages264p.
ISBN 0-00-231643-9
OCLC 4482825
823/.9/14
LC Class PZ4.H64856 Pi PR6058.I448
Preceded by An April Shroud  
Followed by A Killing Kindness  

A Pinch of Snuff is a 1978 crime novel by Reginald Hill, the fifth novel in the Dalziel and Pascoe series.

Contents

Plot summary

Receiving a tip from his dentist Jack Shorter, Inspector Peter Pascoe takes a closer look at the Calliope Kinema Club, a film club notorious for showing adult entertainment movies. Shorter is convinced that one particular scene in a movie he recently saw was too realistic to have been staged with fake blood, but when Pascoe starts investigating, he soon comes across the actress in question, Linda Abbott, who obviously didn't suffer from any harm and assures Pascoe that his and Shorter's concerns are unnecessary. Meanwhile, the "Calli" has been vandalised and its proprietor Gilbert Haggard has been assaulted so badly that he succumbs to a heart attack. The only existing copy of "Droit de Seigneur" - the film Jack Shorter was so worried about - has been destroyed, and when 13-year-old Sandra Burkill accuses the dentist of being the father of her (yet unborn) child, it begins to look as though Shorter had merely tried to avert suspicions by his claims against the "Calli".

Publication history

Television adaptation

The novel was adapted for television in 1994, starring Gareth Hale as Dalziel and Norman Pace as Pascoe. It was shown on the ITV network in three parts over consecutive Saturdays, beginning on 9 April. However, Reginald Hill is said to have been unhappy with the series, and the series remains the only Hill adaptation to star Hale and Pace in the leading roles.[ citation needed ] The Dalziel and Pascoe novels were later picked up by the BBC, where they enjoyed greater success. Between 1996 and 2007, 11 series of Dalziel and Pascoe starring Warren Clarke and Colin Buchanan were made.

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<i>A Pinch of Snuff</i> (TV series)

A Pinch of Snuff is a British television crime drama miniseries, consisting of three fifty-minute episodes, that broadcast on ITV network from 9 to 23 April 1994. The series, adapted from the 1978 novel of the same name by author Reginald Hill, was the first Dalziel and Pascoe adaptation for TV, arriving two years before the more widely known BBC adaptation that followed in 1996. In this miniseries, the characters of Dalziel and Pascoe were played by comedians Gareth Hale and Norman Pace, with Christopher Fairbank as loyal sidekick Edgar Wield, and Malcolm Storry as Insp. Ray Crabtree.