Old Bones

This is the first book I have read in this series and I would like to go back and start at the beginning. Many of DCI Bill Slider’s previous cases were mentioned in this book. This was a good Police procedural. The characters were well defined and realistic., and I loved the plot.
Many thanks to Black Thorn and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Bill Slider is not popular with the higher ups after accusing one of being part of a sex and finance case. He is assigned to a case of old bones. A garden contractor has turned up what appears to be the full skeleton of a 13 or 14 year old girl, who had probably been dead at least 20 years. After checking through missing persons cases, they find that a girl living at that address, Amanda Knight, had gone missing 25 years before. After much work, they track down the mother (father has since died). The mother is sure her husband couldn't have killed her, even though it would have been difficult for someone outside the family to have buried her in their garden.

They talk to others who lived nearby and her best friend (who wasn't very close), and her mother's sister. The best friend does give them a lead that shortly before she died she talked about a rich new friend who went to a fancy private school. For awhile, it seems like they'll never find someone who they could prosecute. However, they keep looking, and finally get some real clues!

The story is very well told and has a big surprise at the end!

Slider’s desert-dry viewpoint is a joy. He is an old fashioned copper who is heartily sick of all the new management-speak, but nonetheless straight as a dye without being remotely starchy. His irreverent humour bubbles continually away in the background, annoying his superiors and exasperating his subordinates. For a nice change, he isn’t some grizzled loner but has a happy marriage to a professional musician.

I liked the fact that the loss of a little girl isn’t just treated as some dry academic puzzle – there is a real sense of poignancy of a life unfulfilled as Slider and his team try to grapple with who had murdered her and buried her in the back garden. I also enjoyed the fact that we don’t have a CSI-type approach where they have shedloads of forensic evidence to answer all the questions. In fact, there is precious little to go on, except the faulty memories of those involved all those years ago.

As with all the best police procedural mysteries, there are a number of candidates and possibilities, though I did guess one of the major twists well before it was revealed. Not that it mattered all that much – I was too invested in the main characters to mind and besides, there were still some interesting developments. There is a lovely subplot that develops regarding one of Slider’s team and a youngster caught up in the system.

I appreciated the absence of any grisly details, undue violence or gore – but I certainly wouldn’t peg this in the cosy mystery genre. All in all, a thoroughly entertaining read that comes highly recommended.

While I obtained the arc of Old Bones from the publisher via NetGalley, this has in no way influenced my unbiased review.
9/10

It's the first book I read in this series and won't surely be the last. I appreciated this classic police procedural, engrossing and entertaining.
It's well written, the plot is interesting and entertaining, the cast of characters well developed and fleshed out.
I look forward to reading other books by this author.
Recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Well developed characters and a well written police procedural. Solid police work on a cold case makes this an interesting whodunit.
My thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review..

Old Bones by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. Old bones have been discovered in an England house plot and it gets assigned to Slider, to get him out of the way and out of his bosses hair...

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles has been writing the DCI Bill Slider mysteries for a long time, and they are solid police procedurals. This is the nineteenth of the series and it doesn’t suffer any diminution or signs of age. Although there are numerous references to earlier works, matters are sufficiently explained so that a reader new to the series would have no problem understanding what is going on.

A young couple has hired someone to pull down an old shed in the garden of their relatively new home, and a skeleton is discovered. The police from the Shepherd’s Bush station are called in, and an investigation is started. They discover a “misper,” that is the report of a missing person, a fourteen-year-old girl who had gone missing from that house twenty-five years before. The search is on for her killer.

I don’t like spoilers, so I am not going to give any. Suffice it to say that the investigation is both thorough and very interesting. Unlike in some books, things take time; there are no nearly magical leaps of detection which the reader cannot follow, rather, Harrod-Eagles plays very fair with the reader. I was able to figure out the mystery after Bill Slider, but before it was revealed. I was very pleased.

If you like police procedurals, I recommend “Old Bones,” in fact, I recommend the entire series. You could go further and do much, much worse.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. The opinions are my own.

This was the second one I’ve read of the long-running Bill Slider series by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, and I look forward to seeking out and reading others. The characters are well-developed and true to themselves, with personalities ranging from the serious to the silly (I loved all the malapropisms from Slider’s awkward colleague). It’s refreshing to read a well-written, classic police procedural when every other book seems to want in on the trendy unreliable-female-protagonist or sinister-seeming-spouse psychological thriller genre. Bill Slider does solid police work on a cold case and gets the job done.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a digital advance review copy.

An unusual story line which actually shows a human side to the detectives involving in this case. An interesting storyline that keeps the reader involved in all that is going on. Look forward to catching up with Bill Slider in future stories and the prequel of this story.

This is the first Bill Slider book and Cynthia Harrod-Eagles book that I have read and I loved it.
I checked the copyright several times as there is very much a retro feel to the story-there are DNA tests that take a real world time frame to come back, very real dogged policework which relies on communication skills, eye for details which has the feel of an older book.
Bill Slider is a detective on the outs-an investigation into child sex abuse and exploitation which reached as high as a commanding officer has left him with a small coterie of loyal staff anddetermination to make investigation Neptune bring justice to the girls he dealt with in the previous book . There are enough details and carrying on of the story in this to make me want to go back and read it whilst carrying on the story as a side plot.
The main story concerns the discovery of human remians in a residential back garden.
The owners are furious, and demanding compensation from the police in a darkly funny scene where the police have to search the whole property-the spectre of Rose and Fred West and John Christie looming over the proceedings.
The bones turn out to belong to a young girl, and here begins the paper trail as the detectives work backwards through time to establish the previous owners, the way the street was laid out 25 years ago as well as identifying who the bones belong to.
The key to this book is that the characters are built through the dialogue. Most of the story would easily be doubled by another writer, here the author skilfully uses vernacular and colloquialisms to go back and forth between suspects, witnesses and past residents. You have a sense that Cynthia Harrod-Eagles has a keen ear for the way people talk and what they reveal is as important as the pasues they take-or don't-between breaths.
I worked out what was going on half way through the book but that absolutely did not spoil my enjoyment of this police procedural-the joy is in reading the journey of the whoudunnit rather than just the thrill of working it out.
I am hopeful that there will be a more in this series and would recommend it to fans of police procedurals, detective fiction and mysteries.

This is a fine traditional British police procedural series with a recurring cast I'm always happy to meet again. This mystery is refreshingly human-scale (no ghoulish serial killers, no plots to undermine the world, thankfully no psychological games being played by women who are called "girl" in the title). In this case, I guessed the solution well in advance, but still enjoyed getting there and seeing the mystery worked out with just a touch of Ruth Rendell-style creepiness about the murder and its resolution. A treat for traditionalists.

DCI Slider works out of the Shepards Bush police station in London. Some old bones, in fact an entire skeleton has been discovered under a couple of paving slabs at the bottom of a garden in his precinct. The forensic pathologist has determined the bones to have lain in the ground at least twenty years and The skeleton is of a 13-14 year old female.
Slider’s boss is thrilled to assign Slider this case as he is not the flavor of the month with the top brass as he has been investigating an underage sex ring with connections to several very senior police officers.
Bill slider is middle aged, on his second wife and starting his second family. Refreshingly he is a humble and self effacing guy without the conceit of so many fictional police detectives. He treats his team with respect which leads to camaraderie not friction. He also delegates a lot, in so many books the DCI and the sergeant do everything, but in this book, many different constables do a lot toward solving the crime..
Intelligently and humorously written with likable characters. A clever plot with a massive twist at the end.
The 19th book in the series, it was the first Bill Slider for me, but won’t be the last. He has been compared to Inspector Thanet by Dorothy Simpson, and I agree, but I also see similarities with DCI Diamond by Peter Lovesey.
Thank you netgalley and Black Thorn for the opportunity to read this book. I enjoyed it very much.

A solid police procedural portraying the right amount of office politics, hard work, and intelligence. DCI Bill Slider did seem to have ruffled a few feathers in the office in his previous book which caused him to be assigned to old bones.

Bones were found in the garden by a young couple, and they were surmised to have been buried 20 years ago. 14 year old Amanda Knight had disappeared from the garden around the same time. A most difficult of all cold cases, there seemed to be no leads. The suspects and the witnesses were dead or lost. Nobody seemed to know much.

My first book by author Cynthia Harrod Eagles, and it took me some time to get oriented to the characters and their style of working. This was the 19th book in the series, my first, it started slow, and it was difficult to follow the way the office worked with the fallout of the previous case. But once the investigation started rolling, it was one wicked ride.

DCI Slider and his team form a cohesive team who painstakingly followed every single path they could, even if it led to a dead end. Their passion and single mindedness had to be commended upon. The author had made them quite interesting, enough for me to get hooked to the plot.

The whole book was a routine police procedural, it went where it was supposed to go until the last few chapters. Then it turned upon itself and gave me the shock of my reading life when a massive twist was revealed. I COULD HAVE NEVER IMAGINED THE DIRECTION THE PLOT WOULD GO!!

The book finished with the explosive end where the team had to work with the new reveal. Slider was fantastic at the way he deduced the right perp. One more killer caught, on to my next!!

A great story that is an easy read. Bill Slider is a likeable character and I definitely want to read more books about him.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

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.

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!

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.