There Are No Ghosts in the Soviet Union consists of a novella and five stories by Reginald Hill, each of which are entirely different from the next. The title novella deals with Soviet bureaucracy and, well, a ghost that the authorities insist does not exist. Then there’s a Joe Sixsmith story which tells us how he came to own his cat, followed by a harrowing tale of a British boot camp during World War I. “Auteur Theory,” about actors making a movie from a Dalziel and Pascoe novel, is perhaps the most meta story I’ve ever read; not only are there actors playing those characters in a plot taken from a (real) D&P novel, but there’s a character called Reginald Hill in it, and he is the author of the original novel from which the screenplay was written! Honestly, this story alone is worth buying the whole book. But wait, there’s more: “Poor Emma” imagines what happens to Emma after Jane Austen’s novel of the same name ends, and the book is rounded out by a rather clever tale about murder. The book was published in 1987 and nothing in it indicates if any or all of these stories were previously published, but as an introduction to the amazing range of this fine author, it can’t be beat. Recommended! ( )

Wonderful as always ( )

Collection of half a dozen crime stories first published in 1987, which has some bearing on the tone of some of them. The collection is laced with a biting humour, and some superb if sardonic observations of human nature.

My favourite in the collection is the eponymous novella, in which Inspector Lev Chislenko arrives at the scene of an accident at a government building in Moscow, where the witnesses say they saw a man in old-fashioned clothes fall down a lift shaft - only there is no body. It's an embarrassing case to be involved with, especially as the higher-ups want the rumours of ghosts quashed as un-Soviet. There are no ghosts in the Soviet Union. But to his discomfort, Chislenko's investigation intended to prove the non-existence of ghosts by showing that no such accident happened even in the past leads him in a direction he hadn't expected to go.

Other stories include "Bring back the cat!", private detective Joe Sixsmith's first case; "The Bull Ring", a nasty little tale about brutal training methods used on Great War recruits; "Auteur theory", a nominally Dalziell and Pascoe story which turns out to be meta discussion on more than one level; "Poor Emma", which I can only describe as one of the odder pieces of literary fanfic gamesmanship I have encountered, probably as likely to infuriate Austen fans as please them; and "Crowded Hour", about a "take the wife hostage at home" armed robbery attempt that twists and turns.

I didn't like all of these stories, but they were all well-crafted pieces that made me think. Only half of them are ones I'd really want to read again, but I don't regret the time spent on any of them. ( )

I'm a fan of Reginald Hill's, but this collection of stories, first published in 1987, didn't really work for me at all. I think I was probably just in the wrong mood for them. I'll concede that they're all very clever, possibly too clever, usually I like that, but here it just seemed to miss the mark with me all the time. ( )

Hill loves deviousness. Characters are drawn clearly but not with depth, all revelling in layers of deception. Nicely constructed tales, with an impressive range of settings and styles. From nomenklatura-era USSR to Austin-esque Georgian family dynasties ( )