Fell Purpose

November 9, 2009
Harrod-Eagles’s 12th Bill Slider mystery (after 2008’s Game Over
) offers a familiar plot. When the strangled corpse of nearly 17-year-old Zellah Wilding, a star student at St. Margaret’s, an excellent all-girls church school, is discovered in a London park near her home, Slider and his team investigate. The suspects, all stock characters, include Wilding’s overprotective and repressed father; Ronnie Oates (aka the Acton Strangler), who was just released from prison after a series of convictions for indecent assault; and Wilding’s secret boyfriend. Few will be shocked when it turns out the victim led a less than exemplary life. The punning or joking chapter titles (“Salmon-Chanted Evening,” “You Must Remember This; A Kiss Is Still a Coordinated Interpersonal Labial Spasm”) may appeal to some, but others will find the humor at odds with the grim reality of police homicide work.

November 15, 2009
Daddy's perfectly behaved little darling gets strangled.

Zellah Wilding, just shy of 17, always did exactly as she was told. She was sweet, she was smart, she never misbehaved—or so her daddy thought until she turned up togged out like a tart, her lights turned permanently off by a pair of tights. Finding out who strangled her falls to DI Bill Slider of the Metropolitan Police, Shepherd's Bush, West London. Slider learns from her schoolmates at St. Margaret's that Zellah not only disobeyed her controlling father, but had recently dropped a dclass young beau in favor of someone else she refused to name. Matters heat up when the press latches onto a possible perp: Ronnie Oates, the so-called Acton Strangler, whose MO has been to rape his victims, then garrote with them tights. But Slider has other ideas, particularly after the autopsy shows that Zellah was eight weeks pregnant. Her father blames her mother for being too lenient, her mother blames her father for not letting the girl grow up, and the one responsible feigns an indifference Slider ultimately discredits, although most readers will have reached the same conclusion early on.

Though new father Slider (Game Over, 2008, etc.) has worked on more subtle, interesting cases than this so-so exercise, it's charming to see him so daffy about his young son.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 1, 2009
Harrod-Eagles Bill Slider series is one of the better British police-procedural series around, perfectly capturing the conflicts, dangers, frustrations, and satisfactions of modern police work and showcasing Slider as a captivating hero, with his appealing mix of ruthlessness, common sense, and empathy. His latest case involves the brutal murder of 16-year-old Zellah Wilding, whose strangled body is found, dressed in tarts clothing, near Wormwood Scrubs prison. But Zellah was a bright, gifted student, a talented artist and musician respected by her teachers and peers, so how did she come to such a brutal and ignominious end? As Slider investigates, he learns that Zellahs life was full of conflicts and secrets, from her strict father, who refused to let her date, to her posh friends, to the leather-jacketed secret boyfriend who claimed Zellah was a sex maniac. Readers will find themselves gripped from first page to last by the complex characters, keep-em-guessing plot, surprising twists, andmost of allby the multifaceted Slider.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)