There are No Ghosts in the Soviet Union

by Reginald Hill

A collection of short stories from Reginald Hill, the award-winning author of the 'Dalziel and Pascoe' novels.

Genres: Short Stories, Mystery, Crime, Fiction, British Literature

330 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Reginald Charles Hill was a contemporary English crime writer, and the winner in 1995 of the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement.

After National Service (1955-57) and studying English at St Catherine's College, Oxford University (1957-60) he worked as a teacher for many years, rising to Senior Lecturer at Doncaster College of Education. In 1980 he retired from salaried work in order to devote himself full-time to writing.

Hill is best known for his more than 20 novels featuring the Yorkshire detectives Andrew Dalziel, Peter Pascoe and Edgar Wield. He has also written more than 30 other novels, including five featuring Joe Sixsmith, a black machine operator turned private detective in a fictional Luton. Novels originally published under the pseudonyms of Patrick Ruell, Dick Morland, and Charles Underhill have now appeared under his own name. Hill is also a writer of short stories, and ghost tales.

Reviews

[Alison C · Rating 5 out of 5]

"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!

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Energetic, witty, surprising writing: a pleasure.
I am heartily averse to Jane Austen rip-offs, but found myself making an exception for Hill's wicked take-off "Poor Emma." Hill employs "period" language intelligently and smoothly to present numerous nasty developments for the Knightleys. A sort of Jane Austen meets "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" outing.
The title story introduces a hardworking detective in the Soviet Union, who must juggle his own professional and personal survival against his overlings' demands, a darling romantic interest-- and a sighting of a ghost in an elevator. Such satisfying characters and plot.
The other stories in this collection are equally adept, but even if you read only my two favorites, you'll have a good time with this book.

[Jack Deighton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not my normal reading fare but the good lady knew I’d recently read Jane Austen’s Emma and wondered how I’d react to this author’s take on the characters from that book. Hill is the creator of the detective duo Dalziel and Pascoe about whom he has written twenty-four books. This is a collection of his shorter works and was originally published in 1987. That “Featuring Dalziel and Pascoe” is emblazoned on the front cover is a bit of a cheek. Only one of the six stories here does so and that tangentially at best. Also irritating is that all the story titles are rendered entirely in lower case.

there are no ghosts in the soviet union is a detective tale featuring Inspector Lev Chislenko. (I admit that my first thought with that name was of the famous Igor who played for Dynamo. Being questioned whether he is related to that footballer becomes a running joke through the piece.) Chislenko has been called in to resolve the case of a man being pushed into a lift and immediately falling through the floor, which remains as solid as it always was and there is no trace of him at the foot of the shaft. The obvious explanation is that the man was a ghost. Consequently ideological considerations beset Chislenko. “There are no ghosts in the Soviet Union,” is apparently the set-up line to a Soviet joke but also an assertion that he must find a way to uphold. The story is obviously intended as a satire on the Soviet Union – or at least on how Hill imagined the Soviet Union to be – but is equally applicable to any authoritarian regime anywhere. The resolution depends on Chislenko’s delving into the lift’s origins. It was manufactured in Chemnitz (renamed Karl-Marx Stadt after World War 2) in the 1920s and installed in a now demolished building elsewhere before being re-used in a money skimming scam. His investigations also bring him into dangerous contact with powerful figures in Soviet circles.

In bring back the cat! Joe Sixsmith is a balding West Indian (with a balding jacket) who has just begun his career as a private detective. He is called in by a Mrs Ellison to find her cat which has been missing for three weeks. In the course of his investigations all over one afternoon, he uncovers various family secrets and solves another case entirely, thus making his name. There’s an overt consciousness of racism to some of the exchanges. (Sixsmith was later to become the protagonist of another series of Hill’s books.)

the bull ring is set in the British military training camp at Étaples during the Great War. One of the instructors is excessively harsh on recruit Harry. For Harry’s own good he would say; but Harry doesn’t see it that way.

Dalziel and Pascoe do not appear as such in auteur theory. It is the actors who are playing them on a film set who do. The one playing Pascoe has long been on the way down as an actor and is now saddled with a tyro leading lady who is the director’s new wife. It also includes the bearded writer of the novel which is being filmed (we are, I suppose, meant to assume Hill is writing about himself,) who is becoming more and more annoyed at changes to the script. The story starts with a warning injunction, Nothing in this story is what it seems. You should remember that. The metafictional games in it do not lift it above the category ‘diverting’.

poor emma takes up twenty or so years after Jane Austen left off her tale of Emma Woodhouse and her misguided attempts at match-making. The intervening years have not been kind, though Mr Woodhouse continues, like a creaky gate, to, as we Scots say, “hing lang”. Mr Weston has died and his widow, in a sentence carved from early nineteenth century attitudes and would-be Austen impersonation “eventually declined into religion, to such an extent that it came as no surprise, though an incalculable shock to most decent people, when she embraced the doctrines of Rome.” Mr Knightley has neglected his affairs, indulging himself as a bon vivant and taken up a seat in Parliament (which allows him various other indulgences.) His brother John has lost the confidence of his legal clients and now runs Donwell Abbey on George’s behalf. The conflict comes from the wishes of both to protect that inheritance. All the main characters from Emma reappear, save Jane Fairfax, except for mention of her death. Her husband Mr Frank Churchill is involved in the dénouement. The Mr Knightley shown here is far removed from the one Austen portrayed and so too is Emma herself as she indulges in an action which that younger self would surely never have contemplated but which does have the effect of giving the tale a condign ending.

crowded hour concerns the invasion into her home by two armed men of a woman whose husband is somewhat obscurely rich and has absences from home. It begins, “At twelve noon there were three people in that house. By the time the clock struck one, two of them would be dead and the life of the third would have changed for ever.” The story lies in the journey that beginning implies.

[Jules Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.[return][return]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. [return][return]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.[return][return]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.

[Windy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hill's fans will like this short story collection? One features Joe Sixsmith and tells how he met his cat, Whitey. Another is a surreal story involving Dalziel and Pascoe with the author himself making a cameo appearance.

[Cybercrone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good stories.

The title story is a good example of how difficult it is to be 'politically correct', for any brand of politics, and still survive in real life.

[The Villan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually like these novellas written by my favourite authors but found only a few in this collection enjoyable. Luckily I only paid a dollar from the charity shop for it.

[Jocelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book includes:
There Are No Ghosts in the Soviet Union This would be a great story
Bring Back the Cat! Awesome Joe Sixsmith story about how he got Whitey
The Bull Ring I really disliked this story
Auteur Theory The author does not approve of the way his book is being adapted into a movie.
Poor Emma Emma Knightly (previously Woodhouse) continues to get her own way.
Crowded Hour Daphne Davis is just a regular housewife who gets visited by a lot of people and some of them do leave. Really good story.

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe could be stretched to 2.5 stars, but only if you got rid of all the ridiculously unnecessary foul language. It interfered overwhelmingly with all the stories, except for the one that's a look at Emma and Knightly some twenty years on. The author manages to keep the obscenities out of that one, from deference to its time period, one assumes.
Other than the grossly obtrusive swear-words, the plot of the title story is the most like one of Mr. Hill's more famous novel-length mysteries. It has an intriguing story line that doesn't shy away from the supernatural, but yet is open and believable in the most accepted secular manner. It plays heavily on the perceived notions of the inner workings of the Soviet Union viewed through Western eyes at the verge of their downfall. The ending seemed pretty inevitable.
The only other story I really liked was the one about the black private eye, Joe Sixsmith. He is my favorite Reginald Hill character; he is lovable, not overly clever, but he gets there in the end! In this introductory story, there is just too much implied incest, too many insalubrious family interactions and the ubiquitous bad language to be enjoyable. Although I did like learning where his cat came from!
As for the aforementioned sequel to Emma: I have made it a policy never to read "sequels" written by anyone other than the original author and in this offensive tale I have learned why that is such a good policy!
As for the other stories, none of them were worth reading and the Hollywood one has been told and retold so many times that I was shocked to see it rehashed here as well!
All of that said, Reginald Hill remains one of my favorite authors, especially of mysteries. As I have observed in other reviews, he is that rare writer who improved with age until he was at his zenith when he died. This group of stories proves that he had the spark of greatness early on, but his talent didn't really become incandescent until decades later.

[Laurie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of longish short stories, the title story alone is well worth getting the book for. It helps if the reader has even a faint recollection or knowledge of what life in the Soviet Union was like (dull, doctrinaire, and you never knew who was watching/reporting on you to the authorities). A Moscow police detective is called to an apparent murder -- only there is no body, no perpetrator, and what four people in an elevator (lift) apparently saw was a ghost dressed in old-fashioned clothing. Of course, in the atheist Soviet Union, officially there can be no such thing as a ghost, so the detective finds himself charged with finding a logical explanation to what the four witnesses saw. The twists and turns of the investigation get more and more Kafka-esque, and funnier. I won't spoil the story by revealing the ending, but it's a good one. The second story, Bring Back the Cat, is also a good one, this time involving a redundant Black welder who takes his redundancy money and sets himself up as a not-very-successful and about-to-run-out-of-funds private investigator. Then Mrs. Ellison hires him to find her missing cat, Darkie. Finding the cat at exactly the right moment and in the right circumstances ensures his long-term success -- but find out how. The third story, The Bull Ring, has hanging over it the coming Battle of the Somme and so is suffused with future sorrow; not funny but nonetheless engaging. To my taste the following three stories are not nearly as interesting or engaging as the first three, which is why I rated the book 3 stars, but others may very well like them more than I did. The first two stories I'd definitely rate 5 star, the second 4.5 stars.

[Surreysmum · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always enjoy encountering a short story collection by a novelist I've followed, especially a mystery novelist, because the constraints imposed by their usual "universe" are lifted, and even if the gathered material is necessarily more ephemeral, it's also more diverse and gives a stronger sense of the novelist's sensibilities.

This collection includes, memorably, a "meta" story about actors playing the Dalziel and Pascoe characters in a putative movie, with "the author" taking a major role; a beautifully rendered pastiche of Jane Austen, where Emma Woodhouse/Knightley pursues what you could reasonably see as one logical consequence of her character; and the title story, which must have suddenly seemed dated when the Wall fell just a couple of years after its publication, but which now, 25 years later, reads as a very humorous commentary (and a sobering one) on the abuses of power that will inevitably occur within a repressive bureaucratic system, regardless of where or when said system exists.

Good stuff.

[Rog Harrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am a great admirer of Reginald Hill's books about Dalziel and Pascoe and some of them number amongst my favourite books. However some of his other books I have not liked at all. This is a collection of six stories the longest of which gives its title to the book. I first read this about twenty years ago but I could not remember it and I was intrigued when I came across this in the library and saw "Featuring Dalziel and Pascoe" on the cover because I certainly did not recall any of the stories being about them. I quite liked the title story but was less keen on the others although the short story featuring Joe Sixsmith was not bad. My memory was at fault because in fact Dalziel and Pascoe do feature but not as themselves but as characters played by the actors making a film version of "An advancement of learning". Sad to say that was a story which did nothing for me. Still it was not my least favourite as I really did not like the very short story about the soldier.

[Liliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Reginald Hill and these stories are brilliant.
The short story introducing Luton's finest was just like eating comfort food.
I had once read some comments Mr Hill had made about his writings being turned into film were he fielded the view that his characters lived in an alternate reality when filmed. The short story "The Auteur Theory" plays with different realities and the shadings and blurs between them.
In the first story Lev is a different character than Arkady Renko another Russian whom I am a fan of. Lev is I think a more pragmatic character. I would love to read more about him.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

The long title story is superbly written - a ghost story that works down to the last detail. Some of the other stories are odd - one of them features a Dalziel and Pascoe novel (one that's been filmed as part of the television series), takes us behind the scenes of the fictional television filming of the book, and makes the actor playing Pascoe a pompous self-centred ass, who, with some hasty rewriting of the script, gradually pushes Dalziel into a very minor role. Hill turns up as a character as well, the increasingly angry author who sees his popular story being turned into nonsense.
A pretty mixed bag...

[Bev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oooh, what a superb collection of short stories. (Have to admit, I didn't realise it was a short story collection and was trying to work out the connection between what I took to be part 1, set in Russia, and part 2, the story of a PI hired to look for a missing cat. Luckily, by the end of the second story I realised I was reading under a misapprehension - or should that be miscomprehension - and was able to proceed to the third story without too much scratching of the head.)

Mr Hill is one very clever writer. Haven't finished yet, but am very much enjoying the ride.

[Mizloo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific short stories. The story in which he imagines a sequel to Austen's "Emma" is worth the price of the book - Becky Sharp reborn. the other stories are interesting, esp the one that starts at the end (with 4 people dead in the room) &then goes back to how it happened. He's a very cynical, very sharp, very funny observer of humanity's dark side.

It's out of print, but worth tracking down.

[Kirsty Darbyshire · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Discovered on a holiday villa bookshelf. First story (novella) is rather good and could easily have been expanded or filmed. Some of the other stories have interesting ideas but are not as well developed.

[Eric Grounds · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always loved Reginald Hills books because he wrote beautiful English. No matter how dastardly the crimes he designed for his marvellous detectives, you could rely upon the perfection of his prose. So very sad that he has been dead now for some 4-5 years

[Tiina · Rating 4 out of 5]

The novella "There Are No Ghosts..." was a great read! And I liked the other short stories as well.

[Helen Fleischer · Rating 3 out of 5]

short stories, very dated, formulaic

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous stories!

[Dan Little · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good collection of stories.

Only got the last one to go.

Dan