Severn House
Published May 5, 2026
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
DCI Bill Slider and his trusty sidekick, the well-dressed DS Jim Atherton, have a case that puts them on the spot. The body found in a disused canal in a bleak and neglected industrial area turns out to be that of a police constable. Someone had bludgeoned him to death, then moved the body to a place it might go undetected, except for a dog walker and enough silt in the canal to prevent the corpse from sinking out of sight. Nobody seems to know the deceased constable well, but whenever someone on the Job is killed, pressure is on.
Progress is slow at first. A witness noticed a white van with dirty plates nearby, a thin lead that involves scanning hours of surveillance video to track an all-too common vehicle. Slider and Atherton meanwhile try to find out what they can about the victim, but his low-key style means even his ex-wife has little to say. They learn he had a sister with a drug habit, and that he’d recently been selling expensive gear to colleagues. Was the quiet copper disposing of his worldly belongings or dealing in stolen goods? Had he been involved in something criminal that got him killed?
This long-running procedural series has seen many changes in London policing over the years, and in this case a great deal depends on piecing together fragments from surveillance technology along with old-fashioned shoe-leather policing. It doesn’t involve high drama, but offers a familiar mix of detection, family life, and realism leavened with the author’s characteristic humor. At one point Slider tells Atherton, who is smiling widely, that he looks as though he’d “just eaten a banana sideways,” and their boss can be counted on to mangle and mix up common phrases. Descriptions can be striking, too. One character has “make-up so thick if you’d slapped her on the back of the head it would have come off in one piece like a mask.”
For those who enjoy traditional mysteries with a familiar cast of likeable characters, this series is a treat that continues to deliver.