The tone of the book, the newest in the wonderful Bill Slider series, is initially set with the very first line – in point of fact, the first chapter heading, “The Wrath of Grapes,” describing as it does a thoroughly hung over D.S. Jim Atherton, as he joins his boss, D.I Bill Slider, both of the Shepherd’s Bush police, for just another ‘day at the office,’ i.e., driving to a murder scene. The day that is just starting is portrayed as follows, in typical lovely fashion: “Shepherd’s Bush was not beautiful, but it had something to be said for it on a bright, breezy March morning. Clouds were running like tumbleweed across a sky of intense, saturated, heraldic azure. The tall, bare planes on the Green swayed solemnly like folkies singing Kumbayah. All around, the residents – young, old and middling – were sleeping, getting up, planning their day, thinking about work, school, sex, shopping, footie. Some were perhaps dying. One was dead in what the police called suspicious circumstances, and that, fortunately, was unusual.”
The reader is thereby immediately put into a smiling and receptive mood, the grim destination notwithstanding: When they arrive at the scene, they discover the body of a man very efficiently murdered, with a single gunshot at close range to the back of the head. As the investigation ensues, there are no suspects, no forensics, no obvious motive, and the fact that they cannot find any information as to where the dead man worked or as to the source of his apparently substantial income, only makes matters more puzzling. The police are told he was “a doctor,” “a consultant,” but beyond that there is no information. As Slider says, “it’s astonishing what people don’t see and hear, even when it’s under their eyes and ears.”
The second chapter is headed “Witless for the Prosecution,” but that’s about it for play-on-words – - well, no scratch that, for of course Superintendent Porson, Slider and Atherton’s boss, is present in this book, and malapropisms abound, always guaranteed to bring back that smile. Various permutations of relationships between and among the several well-drawn characters become clear as the investigation continues. The novel is immensely enjoyable in this well-written murder mystery [there are other deaths as the tale continues], and it is as highly recommended as were the previous books in the series.
