One Under (Bill Slider Series #18)

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Overview

For a policeman, there are some questions that have to be asked even if you don’t want to know the answers . . .

A middle-aged man jumps under a tube train at Shepherd’s Bush station, and a teenage girl is killed in a hit-and-run, in a country lane puzzlingly far from her home on the White City Estate: two unrelated incidents which occupy DCI Bill Slider and his team during a slack period. At least it’s a change of speed after the grind of domestics, burglaries and Community Liaison.

But links to a cold case – another dead teenager, pulled out of the River Thames – create doubts as to whether they are indeed unrelated. And slowly a trail of corruption and betrayal is uncovered, leading Slider and his firm ever deeper into a morass of horror.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780727894625
Publisher:	Severn House
Publication date:	10/31/2016
Series:	Bill Slider Series , #18
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles is the author of the internationally acclaimed Bill Slider mysteries and the historical Morland Dynasty series. She lives in London, is married with three children and enjoys music, wine, gardening, horses and the English countryside.

Read an Excerpt

‘So all you’ve got to connect him with Adams,’ said Porson, ‘is the two phone calls on the day. And nothing to connect him or Adams with the Vance case.’ Slider recognised this for a rhetorical question and said nothing. ‘You’ve got the square root of sod all, pardon my French. They’ll have my testimonials on a plate if I go upstairs with that.’ ‘I’d really like to bring in his computer,’ Slider said. ‘Can’t do that,’ said Porson, chomping his last custard cream and spraying crumbs. ‘Not without more to go on.’ He fielded their protesting looks. ‘Oh, it’s a mystery all right What it’s not is a case.’ ‘So – we pull it?’ Slider said. Over the years he had learned, like a good dog, to read his master’s body language and recognise his tones of voice, so he knew the answer would not be a flat ‘yes’. ‘I don’t like it,’ Porson said. ‘Something stinks, and it’s not just one dead sprat. You can stay on it, as long as you get your other work done. But you’ll have to be quick, get me something solid. What are you following up?’ ‘Fathom’s looking for a camera that might have caught Kaylee being picked up on Saturday night. We’re waiting for Stephanopolos’s phone records. I want to look into this trust he was working for and have a sniff around his office. We’re monitoring Shannon’s phone – a sixteen year old can’t go for long without using it.’ ‘Is that it?’ Porson said, wounded. ‘And, of course, something might be forthcoming from Harefield about the motor,’ Slider added unhappily. ‘Forthcoming? You’ll need the second coming to get you out of this. Well,’ he stood up, apparently done with punishing them, ‘do what you can.’ He swilled back the last of his tea, and gave them a final, sharp look to share between them. ‘It’s all cisterns go on this one, because by the end of the week you’ve got to show up, or shut up.’

Table of Contents

Contents

Cover,
Recent Titles by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles From Severn House,
Title Page,
Copyright,
Chapter One: Two Under,
Chapter Two: Starbucks Mater,
Chapter Three: Coupe and Contrecoup,
Chapter Four: Adams Family Values,
Chapter Five: But She Was Too Young to Fall in Love,
Chapter Six: Wake Duncan With Thy Knocking?,
Chapter Seven: From the House of the Dead,
Chapter Eight: The Wife of Bach,
Chapter Nine: Coffee and Donors,
Chapter Ten: Reading Between the Lies,
Chapter Eleven: The Micawber Approach,
Chapter Twelve: Elephant's Child,
Chapter Thirteen: End of the Line,
Chapter Fourteen: Call Girl,
Chapter Fifteen: Noli Me Tangere,
Chapter Sixteen: Billingsgate on a Warm Day,
Chapter Seventeen: More Clubbing Than the Inuit,
Chapter Eighteen: Slouching Towards Kensington,
Chapter Nineteen: And Besides, The Wench Is Dead,
Chapter Twenty: It Was Al All the Time,

Editorial Reviews

"A harrowing storyline brilliantly written. A twisty turny story of horrific child abuse, murder, lies and corruption told sensitively and with a well placed smattering of humour."

D Bradley

"If you like good fiction that could be torn from the headlines, you will enjoy this book."

S Johnston

As usual, Harrod-Eagles offers up an attention-grabbing, fast-paced, engrossing police procedural with plenty of twists and a hero who’s a gifted copper and a likable human being"

Booklist

As usual, Harrod-Eagles offers up an attention-grabbing, fast-paced, engrossing police procedural with plenty of twists and a hero who’s a gifted copper and a likable human being"

Booklist

"Thank you Cynthia Harrod-Eagles for not only giving us a good thriller with big, bold characters but also keeping us amused whilst dealing with some pretty unsavoury subjects."

Breakaway Reviewers

"Cynthia Harrod- Eagles wins our admiration as the adventure proceeds and as always leaves us satisfied."

Fresh Fiction

★ 11/30/2015
Contemporary British police procedurals don’t get any better than Harrod-Eagles’s 18th Bill Slider mystery (following 2014’s Star Fall), which opens with two apparently unrelated deaths. A middle-aged city planner jumps in front of a train at a London tube stop and a teenage girl from a city slum is found in a country lane, possibly the victim of a hit-and-run. Slider, now a detective chief inspector, is only peripherally involved, but things that don’t quite fit tend to niggle at him until he can make sense of them. In this case, those little threads eventually lead to something that is not only awful but affects those so far up the food chain that he is ordered—more than once—to desist. But with his staff of devoted and clever underlings, he cannot. In an age when police budgets are being cut, how much must one kowtow to those who control the purse strings? This is a meditation on modern times as well as a crackling good story. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

02/01/2016
A middle-aged city planner jumps in front of a London tube train; a 15-year-old girl is the victim of a fatal hit-and- run accident. DCI Bill Slider, never one to take the easy way out, gradually links the two cases in the 18th addition to this excellent British police procedural series (Hard Going).

Library Journal

2015-11-19
Digging into an architect's suicide reveals all manner of felonious perversion in London. There's no doubt that George Peleponnos topped himself. Video footage shows him throwing himself under the wheels of a train arriving at the Shepherd's Bush station, and an obliging witness confirms that there was no one near him when he jumped. But Bill Slider, recently promoted to DCI, can't leave the case alone even though his higher-ups keep telling him that there is no case. He can't forget the financial connections the North Kensington Regeneration Trust established between Peleponnos and a number of highflying donors or the very recent telephone calls Peleponnos exchanged with Kaylee Adams, a teenage shoplifter killed by a hit-and-run driver out on the fringe of London. And once Slider links Kaylee's death to that of her friend Tyler Vance, fished out of the Thames six months ago, he's convinced that something terrible has been going on at the raucous parties local MP Gideon Marler has been holding. When Marler, chair of the Police Select Committee, speaks to Assistant Commissioner Derek Millichip, another NKRT donor whose domain includes Shepherd's Bush, Slider is told in no uncertain terms to cease and desist. Naturally, he soldiers on, uncovering pretty much exactly what you'd expect, but he's outmaneuvered at every step by well-placed enemies a lot less impulsive than he is. No prizes for the dogged detective work by Slider and his colleagues (Star Fall, 2015, etc.), who mostly examine phone records and keep interviewing the same forbidden subjects. But if you're looking for moral outrage in the face of unabashed evil, Shepherd's Bush is your kind of place.

Kirkus Reviews