Severn House
Published April 1, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
The twenty-fifth entry in this London-based police procedural series opens at the Shepherd’s Bush police station. For those familiar with the series, the opening chapter holds a shocking twist: Atherton is thinking of proposing marriage to his girlfriend. Even readers new to the series will gather this is as momentous as it seems to his friend and colleague, Detective Inspector Bill Slider. Atherton is a ladies’ man, not one to settle down. That would seem likely to be the most exciting thing to happen at the Shepherd’s Bush police station – it’s sleepy August after all – until word of a suspicious death reaches them.
Rhianne Morgan’s stepfather called for an ambulance when he found his teenage daughter collapsed in their kitchen. When a paramedic alerted police that something looked off, they discover there are marks of a ligature around her neck. Was it the work of Rhianne’s boyfriend, whom she abandoned abruptly and publicly at a school dance? Did a recently-released convict have something to do with it? Or could the stepfather himself have lost his temper with a teenager who had once been affectionate but had grown increasingly testy and oppositional?
There’s something nostalgic about a police procedural in which the police work well as a team, don’t bully civilians, and have lives that are as complicated as most people’s but don’t involve alcoholism or dysfunctional relationships. Procedure itself doesn’t take center stage: no forensic wizardry or detailed descriptions of the bureaucracy of a large organization that has had its share of controversies in recent years. It’s a solid, satisfying story that balances a criminal investigation with the ongoing relationships of its recurring characters, leavened with plenty of humor.
As the author of around a hundred novels, Harrod-Eagles knows how to plot a story and, at 256 pages, brings it in efficiently, rare in an era of doorstoppers. Easeful Death doesn’t lean toward the quirky cuteness of many cozies, nor does it break new ground, transcend the genre, or inspire blurbs that include phrases like “illuminates our most pressing social issues with searing prose.”
Rather, it’s in the tradition of Inspector Morse and Peter Diamond: a police procedural with a cast of detectives who are generally likeable doing their jobs well as they investigate and solve crimes in largely middle-class venues. It’s skillfully written escapism, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In times like ours, it’s comforting to imagine another world might be possible, where decent people working for the public strive to right wrongs and restore order.