The brand-new Bill Slider Mystery - Bank Holiday Monday, and beautiful Zellah Wilding straight-A student, prefect, future Head Girl lies deadnear the famous Wormwood Scrubs prison in London. What was this good Christian girl doing out there, dressed to kill, when she was supposed to be at a sleep-over with schoolfriends? Asecret boyfriend from a run-down estate and a recently-released rapist look tasty; orcould the nearby fairgroundor prison have something to do with it?
Fell Purpose (Detective Inspector Bill Slider Mysteries)
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Book Description
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Harrod-Eagles's 12th Bill Slider mystery (after 2008's Game Over) offers a familiar plot. When the strangled corpse of nearly 17-year-old Zellah Wilding, a star student at St. Margaret's, an excellent all-girls church school, is discovered in a London park near her home, Slider and his team investigate. The suspects, all stock characters, include Wilding's overprotective and repressed father; Ronnie Oates (aka the Acton Strangler), who was just released from prison after a series of convictions for indecent assault; and Wilding's secret boyfriend. Few will be shocked when it turns out the victim led a less than exemplary life. The punning or joking chapter titles (Salmon-Chanted Evening, You Must Remember This; A Kiss Is Still a Coordinated Interpersonal Labial Spasm) may appeal to some, but others will find the humor at odds with the grim reality of police homicide work. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Harrod-Eagles’ Bill Slider series is one of the better British police-procedural series around, perfectly capturing the conflicts, dangers, frustrations, and satisfactions of modern police work and showcasing Slider as a captivating hero, with his appealing mix of ruthlessness, common sense, and empathy. His latest case involves the brutal murder of 16-year-old Zellah Wilding, whose strangled body is found, dressed in tart’s clothing, near Wormwood Scrubs prison. But Zellah was a bright, gifted student, a talented artist and musician respected by her teachers and peers, so how did she come to such a brutal and ignominious end? As Slider investigates, he learns that Zellah’s life was full of conflicts and secrets, from her strict father, who refused to let her date, to her “posh” friends, to the leather-jacketed secret boyfriend who claimed Zellah was a sex maniac. Readers will find themselves gripped from first page to last by the complex characters, keep-’em-guessing plot, surprising twists, and—most of all—by the multifaceted Slider. --Emily Melton
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An author who should be much more widely read - Excellent Book!,
By
This review is from: Fell Purpose (Detective Inspector Bill Slider Mysteries) (Hardcover)
First Sentence: Atherton was singing as he drove.
Zellah Wilding is smart, attends a very good school and has a strict father who tries to keep her on the right path and out of trouble. She is also pregnant and dead. Inspector Bill Slider and his team are out to find her killer. With each new Bill Slider book, my love this series and CHE's writing is renewed. There is a great opening sentence and hook which immediately introduces some of the main characters and gives the reader a bit of their background and relationships. With the book's opening sentence, I realized how much I had missed reading about these characters. The characters are all well-drawn and fully developed. But more than that, I appreciate that the Slider team like and respect each other. There are no anti-social, angst-driven acrimonious characters here. Lest you think this might make the characters boring, they are anything but. One of my favorites is Porson, Sliders superior, who supports and respects his men, but can mangle phrases such as "It's the early day that catches the worm." And "There's more than one way to butter a parsnip." I think CHE must have enormous fun writing Porson's dialogue, but he is not a foolish character, and that takes particular skill. The dialogue is very well done. I occasionally am caught by a Britishism but can always figure them out. She does write in the dialect of the characters, which add realism and personality, but didn't slow down my reading. The story provides the reader a strong sense of place. One thing I love about English mysteries is the history of England itself. In this case, the crime takes place at Wormwood Scrubs, a name I know from reading historical mysteries. Bits of area's histories are seamlessly intertwined into the story. London is not a city I know well, having been there only once for a short time, yet I always had a sense of where the characters were. The story's plot was so well done. This is not another serial killer book, but a classic murder investigation. There is one murder of a young woman followed by focused police procedure to find the killer. What a nice change. Cynthia Harrod-Eagles is one of those writers I feel should be much better know and more widely read. The book jacket compares Slider to John Harvey's Charlie Resnick. I don't know that I completely agree with the character comparison, but I would compare the quality of both author's writing. My only hope is that there will continue to be new Bill Slider books for many years to come. FELL PURPOSE (Pol. Prod-Bill Slider-England-Cont) - Ex Harrod-Eagles, Cynthia - 12th in series Severn House, 2009, UK Hardcover - ISBN: 9780727868428
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles new Bill Slider mystery,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Fell Purpose (Detective Inspector Bill Slider Mysteries) (Hardcover)
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles has created a wonderful character in Bill Slider and I have read all the books in the series. And while I certainly enjoyed Fell Purpose, there was one flaw (in my opinion) that annoyed me -- I spotted the murderer 100 pages before Inspector Slider did. Slider is a highly intelligent policeman and it is inconceivable that he did not pick up on the clues Harrod-Eagles dropped.
Nevertheless, this is a great series. While I think it is meant as a compliment that Harrod-Eagles is being compared with other mystery writers, I believe she stands on her own. Her description of scenes, her wonderful capture of characters with different personalities and her beautiful writing places her head and shoulders above any mystery writer writing today (again in my opinion). Even though I believe it was a mistake for her to be so obvious early on who the murderer was, I look forward to her next Bill Slider mystery and the many more still to come.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fell Purpose,
By
This review is from: Fell Purpose (Detective Inspector Bill Slider Mysteries) (Hardcover)
The twelfth book in the Bill Slider series finds the Detective Inspector and his team from the Shepherd's Bush police station investigating the murder of a young girl, not quite seventeen years old, strangled with a pair of women's tights. There is no evidence of rape, but the crime is quite awful enough - Slider's own daughter is nearing that same age, and he can't help but relate to the horror her parents must now face.
When the parents are interviewed, an interesting scenario is presented: The mother wanted nothing more than for her daughter to attend the 'right' school and make a 'good' marriage, whereas the father wanted to keep her in a regimented lifestyle which would not expose her to the superficial and boy-crazed delights of her friends. She was a beautiful and apparently talented and brilliant young woman. But was she as innocent as her parents were convinced she was? The investigation ultimately turns up at least three viable suspects, but getting inside the head of this enigmatic victim to identify the man who killed her is not easily done. The cops on Slider's team are, as always, wonderfully drawn characters, and I smiled when Superintendent Porson made his appearance, he of the mixed metaphors and endearing malapropisms, of whom the author says: "In his headlong and tempestuous battle with crime, and with life in general, Porson's way was to fling whatever words came first to hand in the general direction of meaning, and hope some of them stuck." Others are described as follows: One cop's coat "was so vast and long it looked as if it was taking him for a walk rather than vice versa. His massive and strangely bumpy bald head shone in the muted sunlight, a beacon of hope and a symbol of courage in adversity." Of another: "He was tall, and so thin he had to run around in the shower to get wet . . . People trusted him and told him things they wouldn't tell someone who looked more like a paid-up member of the human race," and interviews a woman "who was so dense that light bent around her." Yet another is described as "so slow, you should have your own time zone." Despite the horrendous nature of the crime at the center of it, the book is nevertheless a pleasure to read. The author's descriptions of even the smallest scenes are letter-perfect, bringing them to life for the reader. It is another wonderful novel by Ms. Harrod-Eagles, and is highly recommended.
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