He’s reserved, and doesn’t make friends easily. He sees him as dogged, thorough, a good policeman, and a good man. The reader gets to know Bill Slider through his own feelings, but, first, through the eyes of Sergeant Jim Atherton. Even when higher ups shut down the case and pull Slider from it, he still wants to find justice for the victim, Anne-Marie Austen. It’s a difficult case, and the killer seems to always be one step ahead of Slider. When Slider meets Joanna to interview her about the young woman, Anne-Marie Austen, he and Joanna are immediately attracted to each other.įor the first time in his life, Slider allows his personal life to take him away from a case, but the station is able to track him down when they want to report the death of a witness. In the course of Slider’s investigation, he learns that she sat beside another violinist, Joanna Marshall, in the orchestra.

There’s no identification, nothing in the flat, but Atherton recognizes a mark on the woman’s neck. He and Atherton are sent to an empty flat where the body of a young naked woman has been found. Perhaps burnout is why Slider takes their new case so personally. And, she harangues him, saying no one in the police department respects him. She’s disappointed in his lack of career trajectory, and his lack of interest in moving up in society. Don’t marry a woman without a sense of humor. He’s been married for fifteen years to Irene, has two children, but his sergeant, Jim Atherton, and others, warned him. Slider is approaching burnout, in his career and his marriage. There might have been a little more cop humor in the latest book, but this first book serves as an outstanding launch to the series.

So, I went back and picked up the first one, Orchestrated Death. I’m a fan of police procedurals, and this book introduced me to a group of fascinating characters, Detective Inspector Bill Slider and his team. I hadn’t read any of the books in the series when I received the most recent one, Headlong, for review. I didn’t know how the first Bill Slider mystery would hold up.

Death to Go by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles