Author Cynthia Harrod-Eagles is a British writer born in 1948 in the Shepherd's Bush area of London. While studying English, history and philosophy at the University College of London in 1972, she wrote her first novel which won the UK’s Young Writers Award. She toiled away in the business world as her day job, but continued writing on the side which finally paid off in 1979 with what has become her best-selling series about the Morland Dynasty. She’s written over 60 novels in three different genres since then.

She turned to crime fiction in 1991 with Orchestrated Death, the first in her series featuring Detective Inspector Bill Slider, which has grown into 21 novels thus far. Slider is middle-class, middle-aged and, according to his partner Jim Atherton, menopausal, or as reviewer Bill Ott said, “Slider is a beleaguered Everyman, immersed in the dailiness of life.” Atherton, on the other hand, is out of place in the Met because he's a gourmand, fancy dresser and womanizer. The give-and-take between the two men is one of the elements that anchors the series.

On the subject of how she came up with the idea for Slider, the author says

"When I originally embarked on ORCHESTRATED DEATH, the first of the Bill Slider books...I had no thought then of having it published. With no preconceived notions of how to write a detective novel, I started with a corpse; and, in order not to make it too easy, I made it a totally naked corpse in a completely empty flat – a clue-free zone! I didn’t have to invent a detective - Bill Slider walked into my head the first day, complete in every respect. Don’t ask me where he came from: he’s not like anyone I know, at least not consciously; but from the first moment I knew everything about him – how he looked, where he lived, where he’d been to school, what he liked and disliked. So Bill and I started investigating our first case. I had no more idea than he did who the corpse was, let alone who had murdered her or why, so we had to work it out as we went along –  not the recommended method for writing a mystery..."

But Harrod-Eagles was apparently a quick-study, thanks to a lot of research spending time with police detectives, reading police in-house magazines, doing legal and forensic studies, as well as reading newspaper reports of real crimes. The result has been a series worthy enough that she's been likened to John Harvey and Ian Rankin.

The second book in the series, Death Watch from 1992, follows Slider and Atherton when they respond to an arson at the Master Baker Motor Lodge and that led to the death of a loudmouthed lothario salesman, Dick Neal, who leaves behind a bitter wife and a bevy of mistresses. Despite the fact that the victim had ligature marks around his neck and trusses on his genitals, Slider's superiors are hoping it’s just a suicide, due to budget constraints—but then Slider uncovers a possible link between the death and what is happening to the members of the “Red Watch” who manned the Shaftesbury Street Fire Station in the 1970’s.

As Slider digs deeper into the case, he first loathes then envies the dead man his adulterous life, finding parallels between the victim and Slider’s own extramarital affair with a concert violinist. When Slider notes the victim “Seems to me to have been a a sad, pathetic creature,” it's as much an indictment of his own situation as it is Neal’s. But lest one get the impression that Harrod-Eagles’ books are more in the noir vein, she also peppers her writing with wit, a bevy of puns and intelligent dialogue, as well as effective pacing and clever plot twists.