An Amazon alert this morning sent me off to look for what I thought might be a new Reginald Hill novel, THE PRICE OF BUTCHER'S MEAT.
The blurb at Amazon says:
After a close encounter with a bomb, Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel recuperates at the Avalon Clinic in the quaint seaside resort of Sandytown. But soon he begins to suspect that those outside the convalescent home have just as many problems as the residents.
There's a psychiatrist with more to hide than his patients, a pair of powerful landowners with very different plans for putting the resort on the map, a Chinese acupuncturist with a Yorkshire accent, a skinny-dipping baronet and his ice-box sister, and a man from Dalziel's past who ought to be dead.
When someone actually does turn up dead, and under the most macabre circumstances, Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe is called onto the scene. Together again, Dalziel and Pascoe investigate a baffling and complex case as further corpses make it increasingly hard for Sandytown to justify its claim to be "Home of the Healthy Holiday." But it's certainly been put on the map. . . .
Why do they do this? The publishers I mean.
This is the same novel as A CURE FOR ALL DISEASES. Heaven knows what the inspiration is for the alternative title. Amazon are even listing it by that title too, but giving it a slightly different "product description".
I've already reviewed it earlier this year under another cover.
Incapacitated by what he refers to as "the big bang in Mill Street", Andy Dalziel finds that none of those who are near and dear to him want to take him on in his convalescence, and so he takes Ellie Pascoe's advice and books in at the Avalon in Sandytown. As we know the sea air is good for the health, and there is nothing like a seaside holiday for restoring health.
2 comments:
Alternative titles are extremely annoying especially when one is enjoying a series, you think a new one has come out and find it is the American version.
John Lawton's Troy series also seems to have different titles for the same book.
Riptide is Bluffing Mr Churchill
Blue Rondo is Flesh Wounds
The point doing this escapes me in the age of international book sales.
Maybe they do it to make more money. I got caught buying two copies of Asa Larsson's first book - The Savage Altar / The Sun Storm. Very annoying but a valuable lesson learned.
I really do believe that publishers are operating in the year 1983 with their outdated practices. Not only this but also their continued practice of having months, sometimes years, between bringing out the same book in two countries. I've been buying the books I want when I want them since the 90's from a little place called Amazon and I'm pretty confident I'm not alone :)
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