Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Page Updated: 22/06/00

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Cynthia Harrod-Eagles - Page 2

Dead End

Necrochip

Death Watch

Orchestrated Death

First British Edition Little,Brown (1994)

Dead End
A call-out to a murder saves Detective Inspector Bill Slider from having to finish his canteen lunch, but presents him with the problem of a dead conductor - some musicians say the only good kind. In life Sir Stefan Radek was seriously famous and terminally unpleasant, but neither of these facts seem reason enough to gun him down in broad daylight, cold blood and a neo-Byzantine church in Shepherd's Bush. As Slider delves into the megastar's private life he finds there's no shortage of suspects: everyone seems tastelessly glad that Radek is dead. Plenty of people are not telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and lovers past and present - male and female - as well as a hotbed of family squabbles and financial shenanigans complicate an already tangled case.
But at least unravelling the knots keeps Slider away from his boss, 'Mad Ivan' Barrington, who seems to be losing touch with reality and developing an unhealthy obsession with paper clips. And Slider's lost love, violinist Joanna, was a witness to the crime, bringing Slider the feverish hope that he might somehow manage to get her back - and presenting him with wide new opportunities for humiliation.
Fate seems to reserve the worst of complications for the Sherlock of Shepherd's Bush, as he tries to reassemble the pieces of his own life's jigsaw while tracking down a most unlikely multiple murderer.

Paperback - Warner

First British Edition Little,Brown (1993)

Necrochip
The King is dead - long live the King! Exit Detective Superintendent 'George' Dickson, alias the devil you know, to be replaced by DS 'Mad Ivan' Baverstock, a new broom determined to sweep clean, and with no desire whatever to be loved by his subordinates.
It is all par for the course for Detective Inspector Bill Slider as he faces the unhygienic fact of a dismembered corpse in a catering establishment - a case which takes him though the trackless wastes of Hammersmith to farthest Notting Hill, and plunges him into the sort of seedy underworld a sensitive chap would sooner avoid.
But there are still niggling questions to distract him: why didn't Baverstock like Dickson? What is the mystery about the stake-out they once did together? Why is it that through the murk of the present case he keeps getting glimpses of an altogether different and more complex problem? And why do his investigations always seem to take him to pubs that only keep Watney's?
The more Slider learns, the less he likes it, and the less he can believe that his job is ever going to win him friends in high places. Add to that the ongoing crisis of his personal life, and it makes for trying times for the Fabian of Shepherd's Bush. An assured and intriguing mystery, guaranteed to puzzle and entertain.
"Cross Ed McBain with Charles Willeford, set the action in London, and you'll have a feel for the third Detective Inspector Bill Slider mystery… an examination of love, love lost and the ways in which people cope with both. Highly recommended' Booklist
"The author handles police procedures with the same easy authority she brings to busy backstage life of a large symphony orchestra. Her ear is especially attuned, though, to character nuance: the shrill whine of a domestic quarrel, the jarring note of a medical man with long fingernails, the sweet ache of a new romance... it is remarkable for its rich, romantic tone, assured technique and perfect literary pitch." Marilyn Stasio, New York Times
"And another female thriller-writer with a fine cutting-edge to her mind is Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. Her protagonist is Detective Inspector Bill Slider of the Shepherd's Bush CID, a man with a quirky sense of humour and, in NECROCHIP, problems at home with wife Irene, and problems at work with the unhygienic fact of a dismembered corpse in a chip shop.
Ms. Harrod-Eagles and her detective hero form a class act. The style is fast, funny and furious. the plotting crisply devious, and the denouement perversely wayward. And even then. the final line in the novel contains an extra little gasp-inducing twist. Lovely stuff." The Irish Times
'Harrod-Eagles is a strong writer with a strong first mystery, and she promises to produce a strong series.' Drood Review
'Experience shines through… wit and humour as well as a suitably devious plot." Oxford Mail

First British Edition Little,Brown (1992)

Death Watch
The lot of the working copper is getting harder, what with the PACE Act, the PLUS Programme, and other life-threatening initials issued by the Home Office without a health warning. Add to that the regular rousting by top brass like 'God' Head and 'Madarse' Maguffy, a budget tighter than a Victorian corset and a DC who thinks he's in a John Le Carré novel, and it makes for a trying time for Detective Inspector Bill Slider.
But when a noted womaniser dies in mysterious circumstances in a sleazy motel and the whole of his murky past comes to light, Slider begins to question more than whether the game is worth the candle. Right is right, and indivisible. As soon as he's solved the motel mystery, and found out what the Neary boys and gorgeous George are up to, Slider's going to have to start putting his own house in order...
"Masterful… rings resoundingly true" Publishers Weekly
"Experience shines through… wit and humour as well as a suitably devious plot" OXFORD MAIL
'Open the champagne again Cynthia, and let's have some more Slider" SHEFFIELD STAR
"We expect the sensitive coppers in British police procedurals to empathise with murder victims, and the sensitive coppers usually oblige. But Inspector Bill Slider finds himself at something of an emotional loss, in Cynthia Harrod-Eagles's DEATH WATCH, when the victim is Dick Neal, loudmouthed travelling salesman of fire alarm equipment who leaves a bitter wife and a slew of mistresses behind when he dies in a suspicious motel room fire.
"He seems to me to have been a a sad, pathetic creature," Slider finally decides, after first patronising and then envying the dead man his exuberantly adulterous life. In his painstaking efforts to learn what kind of person Dick Neal really was, and what he did to get himself murdered, Slider discovers some unsettling truths about himself and his own extramarital affair with a concert violinist.
A lively and witty writer when she's keeping tabs on the investigation from the Shepherd's Bush police station, Ms. Harrod-Eagles becomes devious when she sends her detectives out on interviews that thicken the mystery and widen the field of suspects. She is most psychologically provocative, though, when she eavesdrops on Slider's guilty thoughts about the wife he's betraying and the lover he's shortchanging. Integrating romance and suspense with the same artful grace she achieved in her first mystery, Orchestrated Death. The author is well on her way to an outstanding series." Marylin Stasio, New York Times Book Review

First British Edition Little,Brown (1991)

Orchestrated Death
Detective Inspector Bill Slider - middle-class, middle-aged, and, according to his partner Atherton, menopausal - is never going to make it to the Yard. Passed over for promotion again, saddled with an uncommodious wife and a ranch-style executive dogkennel in Ruislip, the last thing he needs in his life, or on his patch, is an unidentifiable, naked female corpse.
As he wrestles with an investigation in which the only clues are a priceless Stradivarius and a giant tin of olive oil - an investigation which takes him from the exotic backstreets of Shepherd's Bush all the way to far-flung Birmingham - everyone, most of all Slider himself, is wondering whether this latest crisis will make or break the steely-eyed, furry-headed detective.
And the unexpected advent of True Love might well prove one stimulus too many to his performance...
'Slider hunkered down and stared. He had not noticed before, but the softy-curled palm of her foot had been marked with two deep cuts, roughly in the shape of a T. They had not bled, only oozed a little, and the blood had set darkly. Left foot only - the right was unmarked. The pads of the small toes rimmed the foot like fat pink pearls. Slider began to feel very bad indeed.
'"Time of death?" he managed to say.'
"A beleaguered British detective struggles to solve a series of sinister murders in this masterful debut. When a woman is found naked and dead in a vacant apartment in West London the letter 'T’ carved into one foot, a callus on her neck leads Inspector Bill Slider to identify the victim as a violinist, one Anne-Marie Austen. Although the antipathetic Austen seemed to have no life outside her modest orchestra job, a visit to her dingy bedsit turns up a Stradivarius worth at least a million pounds; other cues lead to a second residence, a luxury penthouse, as well as the extravagant habit of driving to Birmingham just to buy a certain olive oil. As Slider learns that Austen had been pressuring a fellow musician to continue an affair, he himself is drawn to Austen's playing partner and muddies his marriage and the investigation by beginning a romance with her. Like the other developments here, including more killings, the new relationship rings resoundingly true. And although Harrod-Eagles unabashedly hints at a clue that might settle everything, no one bit of evidence answers every question. A sophisticated ending whets readers’ interest in the further adventures of these strong players." Publishers Weekly

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