Shadow Play

Starred review from December 19, 2016
Harrod-Eagles’s outstanding 19th outing for Det. Insp. Bill Slider and his team of London coppers (after 2016’s One Under) opens with Slider under suspicion of having leaked information to the press about a case involving his superiors in the department. He’s therefore assigned a cold case to keep him, as his boss says, “out of everyone’s hair. You can’t upset anybody looking into old bones.” The bones in question were found in the back garden of a London house and belong to a teenage girl; the medical examiner estimates she has been buried there for around 25 years. What was intended as mere busywork becomes, in the hands of diligent and determined Slider (who balances his idealism with an intimate understanding of the unfairness of life), much more complex and controversial. This admirable entry features a well-integrated cast of both sexes and is refreshingly free of innuendo about female police officers. Harrod-Eagles graces her narrative with a quiet wit that makes the book a pleasure to read.

December 11, 2017
At the start of Harrod-Eagles’s highly entertaining 20th mystery featuring Det. Chief Insp. Bill Slider (after 2017’s Old Bones), Slider arrives at a crime scene—the muddy yard of an auto repair shop near a London railway line—where lies the body of a well-dressed, well-groomed middle-aged man, killed by a blow to the head. The shop’s surly owner says he’s never seen the man before. The only clue to the victim’s identity is a lottery ticket tucked in his jacket pocket. Soon Slider is drawn into an investigation that touches the lives of a masseuse with a heart of gold, rapacious property developers, small-time politicians, hotshot lawyers, and handsome rent boys, among other colorful and distinctive characters. Slider and the likable members of his police team enjoy an easy camaraderie, and their exchanges are sprinkled with dry wit, as are those between Slider and his musician wife, Joanna, who acts as his sounding board. Harrod-Eagles shows once again why this series ranks high among contemporary British police procedurals.

January 1, 2017

It takes a lot to keep a series not just going but crackling after 18 books, but Harrod-Eagles does just that with this 19th installment of her London-set procedural series starring Det. Bill Slider. This time around, Slider, who's still smarting from the ramifications of One Under, investigates a cold case when the bones of a teenager are found by a young couple in their new garden.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2017
Bill Slider and his team of detectives are reconciling themselves to the fact that one of their most challenging casesyoung girls lured to sex-and-drug parties by some of the community's wealthiest and most respected men, including senior police officialshas been shelved for lack of firm evidence. It seems Slider's star witness, who saw one of her friends die after being thrown off the roof of the party house, has now decided she isn't sure. Slider is convinced it's a cover-up, but, in the meantime, human bones have been discovered in a shallow grave, and Slider's boss, the silver-tongued Porson, assigns the case to Slider and his team. At first, they take it as a mere distraction, especially once it's confirmed that the bones are more than two decades old. But as they investigate, they discover that this is no ordinary case. In an eerie parallel to their failed sex-and-drugs case, this one involves the tragic death of a teenager, and the story behind what is clearly murder is both tangled and horrific. As usual, Harrod-Eagles offers up a cracking police procedural that captures the trials and tribulationsof modern-day British policing and features characters that are as decent and diligent as they are flawed and human. Another sterling entry in a truly outstanding series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

December 1, 2017
When a man's body is found in isolated Jacket Yard, DCI Bill Slider and his crack team of detectives are called in to investigate. The victim was killed by a fierce blow to the back of his neck. There's no identification on the body, but Slider and his team dig leads out of the daily grind of a murder investigationconducting door-to-door inquiries, watching hours of mind-numbing CCTV tape, comparing DNA to the MisPers list. All that sloggingthe stuff of police procedure, crisply detailed as always by Harrod-Eaglesuncovers a respected Member of Parliament with secrets to hide, corrupt and greedy businessmen, a woman whose outward heart of gold hides dangerous ambition, and a victim whose only desire was to retire to the home of his dreams. Along with a thoroughly engaging crime story, Harrod-Eagles also delivers plenty of peripheral humor, from the easy and always entertaining banter among Slider's motley team to the way Slider's boss butchers the English language with his hilarious non sequiturs. Another winner from a talented and prolific genre veteran.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)