Bill Slider Books in Order: How to read Cynthia Harrod-Eagles’s series?

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By the author of The Morland Dynasty series.

What is the Bill Slider series about?

Writer Cynthia Harrod-Eagles (also known as Emma Woodhouse and Elizabeth Bennett) was famous for writing historical novels before writing the Bill Slider Mystery Series. She started it in 1991 as a side project with no future, but it became a best-selling series since.

The story is about the investigations of Detective Inspector Bill Slider. He is a middle-class, middle-aged, and middle-of-the-road cop from Shepherd’s Bush in London.

One day, he got the chance to prove himself, and his life and career changed.

How to read the Bill Slider Books in Order?

The Published order for the Bill Slider series is the same as the chronological order. Every book in the Bill Slider series works as a standalone story, but the lives of the different characters evolve from one novel to the other.

  1. Orchestrated Death – Detective Inspector Bill Slider is never going to make it to Scotland Yard. He’s spent most of his working life at Shepherd’s Bush nick, and stopped minding long ago about being passed over for promotion. But then the unidentifiable body of a woman turns up on his patch, and suddenly Slider and his partner Atherton have a chance to prove themselves.
  2. Death Watch – The lot of the working copper is getting harder: new regulations, regular rousting by the top brass, a budget tighter than a Victoria corset and a DC who thinks he’s in a John Le Carré novel makes it a trying time for Detective inspector Bill Slider. Then when a noted womanizer dies in mysterious fire in a sleazy motel and the whole of his murky past comes to light, Slider begins to question whether this was suicide… or murder.
  3. Necrochip aka Death to Go – There’s a changing of the guard at Shepherd’s Bush police station. But unfortunately for Bill Slider, incoming Detective Superintendent Barrington has something to prove and no desire to make friends with his subordinates. Luckily – or rather, unluckily – Slider has work to be getting on with, and soon the discovery of a dismembered corpse plunges him into west London’s seedy underworld.

  1. Dead End aka Grave Music – In life Sir Stefan Radek was seriously famous and terminally unpleasant, but neither of these facts seems reason enough to gun him down. But as Detective Inspector Bill Slider delves into the megastar’s private life he finds there’s no shortage of suspects, as everyone seems tastelessly glad that Radek is dead. Lies, lovers past and present, and a hotbed of squabbles and financial shenanigans complicate the already tangled case.
  2. Blood Lines – When a famous music critic is found dead, Detective Inspector Bill Slider is called in to investigate the crime, but as the case drags on, Slider realizes he must solve it before the murderer strikes again
  3. Killing Time – Detective Inspector Bill Slider was hoping for a quiet week, but a murder at a nightclub plunges him into the underworld of entertainment to question table-dancers, prostitutes, pimps and cabinet ministers. And when it appears that this murder could be linked to another unsolved case, Slider is left with more questions than ever.

  1. Shallow Grave – DI Bill Slider has always been keen on architecture, but the dead body of Jennifer Andrews, found in a hole dug by her builder husband, rather spoils the view from the terrace of The Old Rectory. It looks a straightforward enough case but as the investigation proceeds, nothing makes sense.
  2. Blood Sinister – On the day of her death the seemingly undomesticated Agnew cooked an elaborate meal for someone. It may have been her old friend and reputed lover, the government advisor Josh Prentiss, but his powerful Home Office friends are pressuring Slider to look elsewhere.
  3. Gone Tomorrow – The stabbed body of a well-dressed man is found slumped on a swing in a children’s playground in the heart of Detective Inspector Bill Slider’s patch. Slider and his team unearth the victims’ sordid lifestyle of debts, drugs and dodgy deals. It soon becomes clear that their prime suspect is a crime baron who will stop at nothing to keep his identity hidden.

  1. Dear Departed – A woman’s body is found in the park. At first glance, it looks as though the woman is the latest victim of the “Park Killer.” But it doesn’t take DI Bill Slider and his partner Atherton long to establish that someone else was trying to pass the killing off as the handiwork of the notorious serial killer. This murder doesn’t fit the pattern; this one was personal.
  2. Game Over – When ex-BBC correspondent Ed Stonax is found dead, the last thing Detective Inspector Slider needs to complicate his life is the reappearance of an old enemy issuing death threats. Trevor Bates, aka The Needle, is on the loose and trying to kill him, and with a high-profile murder to solve, Slider must try to find a spare moment to marry Joanna before their baby is born and stay alive long enough to do it…
  3. Fell Purpose – Bank Holiday Monday, and beautiful Zellah Wilding straight-A student, perfect, future Head Girl lies dead near 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 school friends? A secret boyfriend from a run-down estate and a recently-released rapist look tasty; or could the nearby fairground or prison have something to do with it?

  1. Body Line -David Rogers was a doctor, handsome, charming and rich. He lived the lifestyle of a consultant – expensive clothes, top restaurants, exclusive clubs – until someone killed him in the hallway of his lovely million-plus-pound house. But when Bill Slider and his firm are thrown into the mystery, they soon discover that nothing is as it seems, for though David’s girlfriends are plenty, none of them can tell Slider anything about where he worked or what exactly he did…
  2. Kill My Darling – When Melanie Hunter goes missing, the men in her life come under suspicion. And there’s plenty to suspect: lies, half-truths, deceptions. When you pull one thread, the whole fabric of family life can come apart. There are secrets in Melanie’s past, and pain she tried to hide from the world. Slider and his team need to answer two questions: who loved Melanie…and who loved her too much?
  3. Blood Never Dies – A boiling-hot August day and a handsome young man is found dead in his bath, exsanguinated. Bill Slider’s colleague takes one look at the body and is convinced something isn’t quite right. As Bill investigates, he reluctantly has to agree. But as Slider and his team try to identify the man, it seems that the more they find out about him, the less they really know…

  1. Hard Going – A rare week off with his family is rudely interrupted when Slider is called in to investigate the murder of an elderly man, bashed on the head with a bronze statuette, in what Doc Cameron describes as ‘our old friend the Frenzied Attack’.
  2. Star Fall – It’s a homicide. The post-Christmas lull is officially over. The deceased is antiques expert Rowland Egerton, the darling of daytime TV, stabbed to death in his luxurious West London home. The press are going to be all over this one like a nasty rash: the pressure’s on Slider for a result, and soon.
  3. One Under – A middle-aged man jumps under a tube train at Shepherd’s Bush station, and a teenage girl is killed in a hit-and-run, in a country lane puzzlingly far from her home on the White City Estate: two unrelated incidents which occupy DCI Bill Slider and his team during a slack period. At least it’s a change of speed after the grind of domestics, burglaries and Community Liaison.

  1. Old Bones – DCI Bill Slider’s out of favour in the force – for accusing a senior Met officer of covering up an underage sex ring. As a punishment, he’s given a cold case to keep him busy: some old bones to rake through, found buried in a back garden, from a murder that happened two decades ago, and with most of the principal players already dead.
  2. Shadow Play – The body of a smartly-dressed businessman turns up in the yard of Eli Simpson’s car workshop. But there’s no ID in the pockets and Eli swears he’s never seen the man before.Then a girlfriend turns up with a name, and claims the victim told her he was someone’s right hand man?. But old fractures and scars, discovered at the autopsy, suggest a more colourful past. DCI Bill Slider and his team read “enforcer”.
  3. Headlong – When one of London’s best-known literary agents is found dead in strange circumstances, having fallen headlong from his office window, DCI Slider is under pressure from the Borough Commander to confirm a case of accidental death. But when the evidence points to murder, Slider and his team find themselves uncovering some decidedly scandalous secrets in the suave and successful Ed Wiseman’s past.

  1. Cruel as the Grave – Fitness trainer Erik Lingoss is found dead in his west London flat, his head smashed by one of his own dumbbells. His heartlessly-dumped girlfriend, blood on her clothes and hands, is the prime suspect. She had means, opportunity, and motive. But is the case as clear-cut as it seems? Handsome Erik Lingoss had clients in high places; and he seemed to engender powerful emotions. If it was a crime of passion, there was plenty of that to go round: love strong as death, jealousy cruel as the grave.
  2. Dying Fall – The woman lies dead at the foot of the stairs. It’s obvious what happened: she tripped and fell. But PC D’Arblay, called to the dilapidated West London villa by an anonymous tip-off, can’t shake the feeling that’s exactly what someone wants him to think. DCI Slider, of the Shepherd’s Bush murder squad, is soon convinced D’Arblay’s right. But with no motive, no murder weapon and no idea even who the victim is, Slider faces steep odds to get a result . . . while each painstaking step towards the truth brings him closer to a ruthless, evil killer.
  3. Before I Sleep – Felicity Holland is missing. She left her handsome West London house to go to her weekly pottery class and didn’t come back. She’s a mature, sensible woman with a stable home life and a happy marriage – no reason to abscond. Her distraught husband is convinced she must have been snatched. DCI Bill Slider and his team know that when a woman goes missing, you have to move fast if there’s to be a hope of finding her alive. But with no evidence of foul play – nothing to go on at all – where do you even start looking?

If you like our article about the Bill Slider series in order, don’t forget to bookmark it! Also, you may want to take a look at Deborah Crombie’s books.

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