9th Bill Slider a little dull, but Joanna & Sue resolved !

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	• Gone Tomorrow: A Bill Slider Mystery Cynthia Harrod-Eagles St. Martin's Minotaur, 2002 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

This is a Weak Book in the Series!

I love Ms. Harrod-Eagles' Bill Slider. He is one of my favourite Police Detectives out there right now. He's smart, funny and has a droll sense of humour, and he's a genuinely nice guy. But I was disappointed with this book. It was somewhat disjointed and had a loose plot. The reader figures out who the bad guy is practically right away and it's a matter of reading to find out how they manage to get him. And even there we are thwarted because the ending is rushed and we don't actually get the satisfaction of seeing the bad guy nailed with the evidence. Ms. Harrod-Eagles' dry wit and her puns are still excellent though, and I will continue to read this series.

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HER CHAPTER TITLES ARE KIND OF "PUNNY"

The base plot of __ GONE TOMORROW __ is almost generic. A group of dedicated policemen (and women) have multiple murders to solve. At first there seem to be no clues and no motives for the killings. There are no witnesses to anything, at least no witnesses who are willing to talk to the police. Anyone who might know anything seems to be frightened almost "out of his or her wits." As is often the case in Police Fiction, the higher-ups who are politically motivated but who have no actual experience in investigative work, are putting pressure on our hard working heroes to solve the murders yesterday for publicity purposes.

This, then, is the background for this latest Bill Slider mystery. Into the plot mentioned above are thrown the first murder victim, who is discovered, stabbed, sitting upright on a children's swing in a park, without any identification; a couple of later murder victims; Detective Inspector Slider, and his domestic problems; Detective Atherton, and his domestic problems; Slider's boss whose wife has just died; and an assortment of witnesseses, victims, and good and bad guys, who sometimes are not so good or not so bad; and, oh yes, an oddball witness or two such as a blind man and his retarded adult son.

What I think that Cynthia Harrod-Eagles (the author) does so well is to show how a group of police investigators, working as a team, and following up each lead, no matter how minor, doing repetitive, fatiguing legwork, can make a case out of seeming bits and pieces of nothing. She also makes almost all of her main characters come to life, and gives them lives and problems of their own, outside of the main plot.

I was also fascinated by the sense of humor she showed in her chapter titles, each one a masterful pun. Following are a few of my favorites:

"Opening the Male"

"The Eyes Have It"

"From Err to Paternity"

"Bra-Tangled Spanner"

And, my personal absolute favorite: "Bet Your Bottom Deux Lards"

To find out how well each of these and ten or so more chapter titles fit into the content of their respective chapters, I guess that you'll just have to read __ GONE TOMORROW __ yourself.

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9th Bill Slider a little dull, but Joanna & Sue resolved !

We've had to wait close to four years for the latest (Brit) Detective Inspector Bill Slider since "Blood Sinister", so we were delighted to get hold of this hardback and catch up on Slider and love-interest and roommate Joanna; his sidekick Atherton (and his new love interest, Joanna's friend Sue); and the gang at Shepherd's Bush PD. The plot gets going in a hurry as a dead body is discovered in a park; and we're off and running despite a paucity of clues in this entertaining police procedural. It takes an awfully long time and another body or two to head the good guys to the right solution, so the reading gets a little logy at times. Meanwhile, we learn Joanna did take the orchestra job over on the continent, so her live-in relationship with Bill is pretty cold -- phone calls and an occasional visit or two per month is causing its own share of frustrations for our ever so gentle leading man.

Harrod-Eagles is a lovely writer who gets us inside the heads and hearts of our favorite characters. While they busily solve crimes, the leading characters become our friends and companions, and their relationships and affairs matter to us. Their skills at solving murders and other crimes are impressive, and generally the plots satisfy. This one is probably a tad weaker than some other entries in the series, but we do finally find out the status of Joanna and Bill, and Sue and Atherton. In all honesty, this novel will probably appeal to the author's faithful fan club; but read standalone without the previous eight as background, it would probably generate only lukewarm enthusiasm among the average reader. Hopefully now that some of the love-life stuff is resolved, maybe the zip will be back in the tenth entry to be released mid-year 2004. New readers might well just wait.

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not as bad as it was made out to be

This is my first bill slider mystery. Without having been prejudiced by other bill slider books, I enjoyed this one immensely. I agree that the ending is a bit rushed and can be improved upon. However, the dialogues are lively and witty; the characters are well-developed. (For a mystery, that is. After all, this is not supposed to be a "character piece.") What I found most amazing was how Ms. Harrod-Eagles can bring a character alive in a few paragraphs by a description of his mannerisms and his speech. I would definitely recommend this book for someone who has not read her other bill slider books.

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reviews: page 1, 2

"All around, for miles and miles in every direction, in streets and shops and houses, real life was going on, oblivious; but here a dead man sat, the full stop at the end of his own sentence, with a little still pocket of attention focused fiercely and minutely on him. Why him? And why here? Slider felt the questions attaching themselves to him like shackles, chaining him to this scene, to a well-known process of effort, worry and responsibility."

Detective Inspector Bill Slider returns in another thrilling mystery from the prolific pen of Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.

In the heart of Shepherd's Bush, London-Slider's patch-a groundskeeper discovers a well-dressed man seated on a children's swing. Problem is, the man is dead, a single, perfect stab-wound to the heart. Even more mysteriously, someone has clearly rummaged through the man's pockets-but left behind over a thousand pounds in cash.

Initial investigations confront a wall of silence, but this only fuels Slider and his team's determination to solve the case before it gets taken off their hands and they face failure on their own doorstep. The task is made no easier by Slider's qualms over his long-distance romance, or by Detective Superintendent Fred "The Syrup" Porson's mysterious absence from work for the first time in as long as Slider remembers.

As Slider unearths the victim's sordid lifestyle of debts, drugs, and dodgy deals, the trail leads the police through London's neighborhoods, from the seedy pubs of Shepherd's Bush through the brothels of Notting Hill to the mansions of Holland Park. As they probe deeper the body count rises and Slider suspects the machinations of a crime baron who will stop at nothing to keep his identity hidden.

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