Crime writer. Best known for his novels about the detectives Dalziel and Pascoe, which were adapted for BBC television from 1996 to 2007. It was not until 1980, when he became a full-time writer, that he realised that his books about the detective duo were his "banker", just as Ruth Rendell regarded her Inspector Wexford books as her "bread and butter". Even so, he refused to turn out one a year – the norm for crime writers with a series – preferring instead to alternate them with thrillers, historical novels, science fiction and, later, a smaller humorous series set in Luton, featuring the black private detective Joe Sixsmith. Hill wrote crime novels in a particularly English way, with lots of jokes (something he searched for in vain in much Scandinavian crime writing) and an affection for northern, non-metropolitan settings. He could create fleshed-out, multi-dimensional characters without any apparent effort, a skill he attributed to his belief that he could never write about someone "who wasn't interesting". Hill was happiest in his Cumbrian home, near Ravenglass, with his wife, Pat, whom he married in 1960, and a variety of dogs and cats. He was reluctant to climb aboard the literary festival roundabout but made a rare exception in 2009, appearing at the Harrogate crime-writing festival on a platform with John Banville which touched on the differences (if any) between "literary" and crime fiction. Hill said: "When I get up in the morning, I ask my wife whether I should write a Booker prize-winning novel, or another bestselling crime book. We always come down on the side of the crime book. All who met him thought of him as a gentle man as well as a proper gentleman. Those who knew him well appreciated his generosity of spirit, especially to new writers, and his sometimes wicked sense of humour.