Star Fall: A Bill Slider Mystery

A celebrity murder preoccupies Det. Insp. Bill Slider in Harrod-Eagles’s excellent 17th mystery featuring the London policeman (after 2013’s Hard Going). Who could have fatally stabbed Rowland Egerton, the popular star of the TV show Antiques Galore!, in his beautiful early Victorian home? Suspicion falls on his longtime friend and business partner, John Lavender, but the more Slider and his team learn about Egerton, the slimier he becomes. Personal details balance the police proceedings: Slider’s wife, Joanne, is recovering from a miscarriage. The couple’s tentative steps toward easing their grief and putting their relationship back on an even keel ring true. Clear, direct prose offers the occasional unexpected phrase: “The traffic lights, all green, were round alien eyes watching him”; a good-looking man has an “enviable head of hair, sculpted by the same firm that designed the Sydney Opera House.” This well-done tale should earn the author new fans. (Mar.)