One Under

The one under of the title refers to a man beneath a tube train in London. Apparently he was a nice chap who loved his aged mother. But in typical Cynthia Harrod-Eagles style, nothing is quite as it seems.

Then a teenager is found dead on a country road. She was a London girl from a problem family and not the sort you’d expect to find out in the sticks. The place where it happened is way off DCI Bill Slider’s patch, and the feeling is that it was an accident. But our hero isn’t so sure.

One Under is several shades darker than your average Slider mystery, which tends towards snappy dialogue and everyone on the same side. As the book opens we discover that Hollis, one of the close-knit police team, has committed suicide. There’s still the back-chat between Slider’s gang, but it all has the feeling of gallows humour. Dear old Superintendent Porson and his malapropisms are being sorely tested, and he’s being stretched thin by Slider’s refusal to let a bare bones case drop and by the pressures of the bean counters above him.

Slider and his musician partner are still getting over the loss of their unborn child. They spend a lot of time talking, and they’re not cheerful conversations. He’s willing to put his career on the line to get to the bottom of why London teenagers might be in danger.

Smart-arse Atherton, Slider’s sidekick, is rather quiet this outing, and his busy love life takes a back seat. It’s left to the feisty female cops – Connolly, Swilley and Tony Hart – to do the heavy lifting with their boss. All three are great creations, but you’ll need to get past Harrod-Eagles’ insistence on writing Oirish and black British dialogue phonetically.

One Under is told with Harrod-Eagles’ customary zest and energy, backed with a spine of steel. It’s a story straight from the newspaper headlines. And if it ever seems to be getting implausible, you just remind yourself that so were various rumours before they turned out to be true.