Star Fall

Starred review from January 5, 2015
A celebrity murder preoccupies Det. Insp. Bill Slider in Harrod-Eagles’s excellent 17th mystery featuring the London policeman (after 2013’s Hard Going). Who could have fatally stabbed Rowland Egerton, the popular star of the TV show Antiques Galore!, in his beautiful early Victorian home? Suspicion falls on his longtime friend and business partner, John Lavender, but the more Slider and his team learn about Egerton, the slimier he becomes. Personal details balance the police proceedings: Slider’s wife, Joanne, is recovering from a miscarriage. The couple’s tentative steps toward easing their grief and putting their relationship back on an even keel ring true. Clear, direct prose offers the occasional unexpected phrase: “The traffic lights, all green, were round alien eyes watching him”; a good-looking man has an “enviable head of hair, sculpted by the same firm that designed the Sydney Opera House.” This well-done tale should earn the author new fans.

March 1, 2015

In this 17th series installment (after Hard Going), DI Bill Slider is savoring the post-Christmas quiet in his London police station, until a call comes in, alerting the team to the murder of famed daytime TV personality Rowland Egerton. The immediate suspect is his business partner, but Slider soon discovers that Egerton had many more enemies than friends.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2015
DI Bill Slider's latest case is a doozy. TV star Rowland Egerton, whose popular antiques show has garnered him legions of adoring fans, is found stabbed in the neck in his luxurious London home. At first, Egerton's longtime business partner is the top suspect, but when he's proved innocent, Slider and his team are left with few leads. Slider's boss is pushing for a result, so when the team discovers that Egerton's colleagues disliked him for his pompous, supercilious attitude, and he was also a notorious womanizer who left a string of broken female hearts and angry husbands in his wake, they figure there are plenty of people with a motive to kill him. But when they finally solve the case, the result is as shocking as it is sad. Harrod-Eagles is one of the doyennes of British police procedurals, and her latest keeps her firmly in that position. Not only does she offer solid plots, strong characters that readers can relate to, authentic cop shoptalk, and plenty of twists, but just at the darkest, grimmest moment, she also throws in a bit of laugh-aloud levity that's pure genius. Highly recommended.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)