A young couple discover human remains buried in the garden of their new house: could this be the resting place of 14-year-old Amanda Knight, who disappeared from the same garden two decades before, and was never seen again?

The problem comes almost as a relief to Detective Chief Inspector Bill Slider, still suffering from the fallout from his previous case. He is not popular with the Powers That Be, and his immediate boss, Detective Superintendent Porson, reckons that at least this little puzzle should keep Slider out of trouble. After all, with a murder twenty years in the past, this is the coldest of cold cases. Most of the suspects and principal players are now dead too, and all passion is long spent. Or is it?

Slider gets all of his team checking out all possible clues and tracing all the records of the case of the missing girl from twenty years previously, He also needs to trace all of the occupants of the house, there have been several changes of owner and also the neighbours who have also changed over the years. Who were Amanda Knights school friends all those years ago and where are they now?

Whilst all of this is going on there is lots of news coming in from the pathology unit about the condition and status of the bones. Can DNA be traced? Where are the clothes? The interaction of the detectives on the case is interesting also as is that of Slider with his wife and the senior officer.

This is the first book that I've read by the author and I'm most impressed. I understand that she is a very prolific writer and that the book I'm reviewing is the 19th in this series but she has also published 35 books in the Morland Dynasty series and another 26 in various other genres. However, the "Old Bones" book has a freshness about the plot that gives no indication that it is the 80th book that she has produced! I was gripped by the originality of the story, the richly drawn characters and the fast moving and highly imaginative plot-line. Strongly recommended.
I received this arc from the publisher courtesy of netgalley.

A cold case and police corruption test Slider's poice instinct to the bitter edge, sealed lips and no evidence are the least of his problems

As an avid reader of mystery and suspense novels, it’s rare for me to be completely surprised by a twist at the end. Let me just say, the twist at the end of this book is superb! Unexpected! Did-Not-See-That-Coming!

This is a very British police procedural, full of slang and language relatively unfamiliar to this American reader, but I thoroughly enjoyed learning new vernacular speech because it was paired with engaging characters and a clever, twisty plot. In addition to all that, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles writes extremely well, equally skilled at description, dialog, and plot. Overall, this is one of the better British police procedurals I’ve read in a good long time. Recommended.

DCI Bill Slider due to his previous case is now out of favour with his superiors so when some bones are discovered by a garden contractor under a shed, the case is given to him and his team. The bones are determined to have been buried about twenty years previously and belong to a young female.
This is the 19th book in the series and unfortunately there were a lot of references to the previous case. This story would have been much better without those as I believe that it slowed the pace of this story. I also didn't find any of the characters appealing.

First Sentence: There comes a point in the life of a balloon when it has lost so much air that it's taut, festive body becomes sagging, wrinkled and—well, frankly, sad.

DCI Bill Slider is decidedly unpopular at HQ due to those implicated in his last cast. A young couple discovers a skeleton in their back garden. It’s thought to be that of a young girl who disappeared from that garden two decades ago. Slider’s boss, DS Porson, hope this case will be simple and will keep Slider out of harm’s way. But does it?

Harrod-Eagles never disappoints. Her use of language, Britishisms notwithstanding, is always a delight, including her chapter headings. Her descriptions of people makes them immediately recognizable—“Carver was a miserable bastard, who had raised resentment to an art form, and his leaving do was appropriately cheerless.” and—“It was time that Atherton, the serial romancer, settled down. He was tall, handsome, elegant, and irresistible to females. Pure catnip. He could commit sexual harassment by sitting quietly in another room. Really, the world needed him to be taken out of circulation.”

How lovely to have the protagonist be in a marriage that has suffered its rocky patches, but that works. There is an excellent comparison between Slider being a cop, and his wife Joanna being a professional musician. There is also a moving and painful description of a mother learning of her daughter’s body being found years often her disappearance. It is this ability to convey both light and dark equally well that makes CHE such a fine writer.

Slider and his team truly are a team. They are an ensemble cast, each with their own parts to play and backgrounds about which we learn. The case is a jigsaw puzzle, put together piece-by-piece, following the clues. But don’t make the mistake of thinking the cases are clichéd or the ending pat. They are far from so being.

“Old Bones” is a very well-done police procedural with excellent characters. It is so well written; no prologue, no tricks, no portents or cliff hangers, just 256 pages of solid writing.

OLD BONES (Pol Proc-Insp. Bill Slider-England-Contemp) – Ex
Harrod Eagles, Cynthia – 19th in series
Severn House, Feb 2017

4 and 1 / 2 stars

DCI Bill Slider has offended the chain of command once again. This time it was for not backing off when he discovered one of the senior officers was involved in an underage sex scandal. So to teach him a lesson and keep him in his place he is assigned a twenty-something year old cold case. Some bones have been found in a garden and he is to investigate.

Slider gathers his team together and they begin their investigation. They check records to see who owned the house, interview neighbors and try to identify the young teenage girl. The pathologist can offer no definite cause of death.

A possible identity is found. She is the daughter of some people who lived in the home. Her name was Amanda Knight. Slider and DS Atherton go to visit the elderly man who was the SIO on the missing persons case. He states that he suspected Amanda's father in her disappearance from the start, but could never find enough evidence to charge him. Slider’s team track down Amanda's mother; her father has passed away. While the police are nearly certain that the remains are Amanda's, they take a DNA sample from her mother. The old file on the disappearance is remarkably slim. Did the detectives at the time do a poor job?

This book outlines the detailed and painstaking investigation of the death of a young girl some twenty-five years earlier. It is extremely well written and plotted and shows an exhaustive knowledge of police work. It describes the highs and lows that police officers experience during the course of any investigation. I really like DCI Slider and his wife Joanna. They make a beautiful couple. Slider's usual partner Atherton is a bright young guy on his way up. Despite some minor grumbling here and there, Slider's team works together very well. I truly enjoy reading about DCI Slider and Ms. Harrod-Eagles is a fantastic author. I love the way she slipped in that huge twist toward the end of the novel. More please!

I want to thank NetGalley and Black Thorn for forwarding to me a copy of this absolutely great book for me to read, enjoy and review.

It has been a while since I read a book in the Bill Slider series and this book didn't disappoint. Great storyline and I had no idea how it was going to end until the end. Great read

Thank you NetGalley and Black Thorn for the eARC.
This is the 19th in the Bill Slider series and as good a police procedural as one can find. I love this series!
Slider (after digging up dirt on some of the higher-ups in no. 18's One Under) is definitely not flavor of the month with the brass and Superintendent Porson is eager for Slider to say under the radar. Therefore, when 25-year old bones are found in the garden of a couple who've just bought the old house, Slider, Atherton and the rest of the team team are tasked with the case.
Here follows a wonderfully twisty, difficult unwinding of a cold case that, at 25 years, is almost impossible to solve. Finding the people involved, when many of them have passed or moved far away, is an intricate process and it's handled so well in this book...I had a hard time putting it down!
Towards the end I did have a sense of the denouement, but that certainly didn't take anything away from my enjoyment.
Porson's malapropism is hilarious as always and I love the way the team works together, they all get along and DCI Slider is a welcome relief from the usual morose, obsessive copper: he's a happily married family man with a child he adores.
Here's hoping for many more in the series, one of the best out there. Highly recommended!

A human skeleton is found in the garden of a house newly inhabited by a young couple. Twenty years ago teenager Amanda Knight disappeared from the same area. Could this be the missing teen?

DCI Bill Slider and his team are charged with investigating. But after so many years, there is no evidence, and a lot of the people who were questioned back then are no longer in the area or have passed.

With police corruption hanging over their heads, Slider almsot welcomes a cold case. It will keep him busy and keep him out of the public eye at the same time.

This is the 19th book featuring DCI Bill Slider. While reading this one, there are a lot of references to previous cases. The book was not fast paced, and it was more mysterious than suspenseful. I did enjoy the characters and the humor that sparked along the way. OLD BONES is a fairly good British police procedural.

Many thanks to the author / Severn House / Netgalley for the advanced digital copy of OLD BONES. Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.
3.5 stars

I would like to thank Netgalley and Severn House for an advance copy of Old Bones, the nineteenth novel in Ms Harrod-Eagles series of place procedurals featuring DCI Bill Slider.

After the events of the previous novel, One Under, Bill is decidedly not flavour of the month with the brass and Superintendent Porson, much to Bill's disgust, advises him to keep his head well below the parapet. To this end he allows a full scale investigation of a skeleton found in a suburban garden during the erection of a new shed. The bones would appear to be those of a teenager buried about 20 years ago but there is no apparent cause of death. After a fair amount of trawling (I hesitate to say digging, though Ms Harrod-Eagle wouldn't) through non computer records they tentatively identify the bones as those of Amanda Knight, a 14 year old teenager who vanished from the same garden in 1990. Cold cases, however, present their own problems, not least finding witnesses and jogging their faded memories. Throughout it all police politics and their last case rumble along in the background.

Old Bones is a first class procedural. I must admit that I guessed the twist at the end but it didn't spoil my enjoyment. With it being a cold case there is none of the modern fad of inserting the perpetrator's thoughts and feelings and it concentrates wholly on the investigation, its progress and the team's reactions to each new piece of information. I found the slow, logical build up to the reveal fascinating as the clues are all there for you to work it out and it was difficult to put the book down.

Bill Slider is a pleasant protagonist. He is mildly anti-authoritarian, not a great character attribute in a hierarchical organisation like the police, and prepared to stand up for his views, even if it may be career suicide and sometimes it seems that his boss, Superintendent Porson, exists to stop him being reckless. He is a bit of an Everyman, standing up for victims at personal cost, intent on doing right, very solicitous of his team and managing to hold on to his sense of humour. The novel is not a comedy but the team have a few good lines of banter to make you smile.

I really enjoyed Old Bones and have no hesitation in recommending it as an excellent read.