“‘When the delicate mayfly of theory meets the speeding windscreen of evidence….'”

February 2, 2010 at 1:56 pm (Book review, books, Mystery fiction, The British police procedural)

Thus does Atherton hold forth in Cynthia Harrod-Eagles’s hugely enjoyable novel. He’s the trusted second-in-command of DI Bill Slider; they work out of the Shepherds Bush CID in London.

In Fell Purpose, Slider, Atherton and their colleagues are faced with a baffling mystery. How did a beautiful teen-ager, Zellah Wilding, end up murdered and abandoned, in a field not far distant  from London’s infamous Wormwood Scrubs? Zellah seems to have had everything going for her: looks, intelligence, and plenty of support at home. Yet when officers talk to her parents, they sense a certain dissonance at work. Zellah’s mother is something of a social climber, very sensitive to appearances; her father, on the other hand, is a deeply religious individual with a rather bleak and rigid view of the world. Instead of drawing together at this anguished moment, they display a shocking hostility toward each other – and toward the officers investigating the crime. Each parent blames the other for the tragedy of their daughter’s loss. Meanwhile, potential suspects appear on the scene in sufficient number to make the inquiry even more problematic.

If this sounds like a grim scenario, it is, and Harrod-Eagles treats the principles involved with the respect and solemnity due them in the circumstances. But this author writes police procedurals, and her focus is primarily on the investigators themselves. They’re an exceptionally appealing group, and this author is at her best when describing their struggles, both on the job and at home. Harrod-Eagles has a penchant for the witty aside. Her dialog fairly sparkles:

‘Atherton pretended a sulk. “I’ll work it out for myself, you see if I don’t”
“I wish you would,” Slider said. “It would give me a bit of confirmation that I’m not completely out to lunch.”
“Hand me my dressing-gown, violin and the customary ounce of shag,” Atherton said, “and I will bend my mighty brain to it.”

At one point,  an exasperated Hart tells McLaren: “‘You’re so slow, you should have your own time zone.”

Likewise, the author’s delineation of various characters nicely showcase her comedic gifts. Hollis is “…tall, and so this he had to run around in the shower to get wet.” Her more somber descriptive passages are equally effective:

‘The Woodley South was as depressing as he had known it would be–a wasteland of mean houses, boarded-up windows, broken fences and dying hedges, trampled front gardens full of junk, the rotting corpses of dead cars that the  boy vultures were taking a long time devouring.

The colorful  chapter headings give Harrod-Eagles a chance to show off both her erudition and her love of puns, to wit:

‘Bedlam Sans Mercy’

‘One Ring Leads to a Mother’

‘Ars Longa, Vita Sackville-West’

‘You Can’t Tell a Buck by its Clover’

And my personal favorite:

‘Salmon-Chanted Evening’

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In a prior post, I voiced my disappointment with Game Over, the predecessor to Fell Purpose. In contrast, this novel is to my mind a real standout, one of the best in the entire series.

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles has a livelyand informative website, well worth visiting.