Stephen Booth

A dark psychological thriller featuring Diane Fry and Ben Cooper, in which a small community is ripped apart by arson and murder. ‘Ingenious plotting and richly atmospheric’ – Reginald Hill.An assassination in the night – an open window and three bullets from the darkness – the victim a harmless middle-aged woman. But can she really be quite as innocent as she seems? The death of Rose Shepherd swarms with questions – unlike the deaths of a woman and her two children in a house fire. A tragedy,...

An atmospheric new Fry and Cooper thriller for fans of Peter Robinson and Reginald Hill.On a rain-swept Derbyshire moor, hounds from the local foxhunt find the body of a well-dressed man whose head has been crushed. Yet an anonymous caller reports the same body lying half a mile away. Called in to investigate the discovery, detectives DS Diane Fry and DC Ben Cooper become entangled in the violent world of hunting and hunt saboteurs, horse theft and a little-known sector of the meat trade.As Fry...

Detectives Fry and Cooper return in another supremely atmospheric Peak District thriller, perfect for fans of Peter Robinson and Reginald HillBuilding work at an isolated farm has unearthed more than just the usual remains… two human are discovered, seemingly buried years apart.With little forensic evidence to go on, Detectives Diane Fry and Ben Cooper have to look back into the farm's history, where they uncover decades of abuse of migrant workers. Is the truth to be found somewhere in this...

Three novels featuring Derbyshire police detectives, DC Ben Cooper and DS Diane Fry from award-winning crime writer Stephen Booth.BLACK DOG – The long, hot Peak District summer came to an end when they found Laura Vernon's body. But for local policeman Ben Cooper the work has just begun. His community is hiding a young girl's killer and a past as dark as the Derbyshire night. It seems Laura was the keeper of secrets beyond her years and, in a case where no-one is innocent, everyone is a...

A death in the family-from-hell bring Detectives Fry and Cooper to a remote and unfriendly rural community in their fourth psychological thriller.'And as it grew dark, Withens became almost entirely silent. Except for the screaming.'A small village in the Peak District, Withens is troubled by theft and vandalism, mostly generated by local family-from-hell, the Oxleys. Now it is the focus of a murder investigation – a man's body has been found on the bleak moors nearby, and the man...

Soon there will be a killing. Close your eyes and breathe in the aroma. I can smell it right now, can’t you? So powerful, so sweet. So irresistible. It’s the scent of death.‘It’s perfectly simple. All you have to do is find the dead place’The anonymous caller who taunts the Police with talk of an imminent killing could be a hoaxer, his descriptions of death and decomposition a sick fantasy. But Detective Diane Fry is certain she’s dealing with a murderer. The voice – so eerily, shiveringly calm...

Major new psychological Peak District thriller from the acclaimed author of Blood on the Tongue and Blind to the Bones.The vast labyrinth of caverns, passages and subterranean rivers beneath the Peak District are a major tourist attraction. But this summer not all the darkness is underground, and not all the devils are folk legends. Mingling with the holidaymakers is a convicted killer, bent on revenge.Fourteen years ago Mansell Quinn was sentenced to life imprisonment for stabbing his lover to...

An atmospheric Fry and Cooper thriller for fans of Peter Robinson and Reginald Hill.A May Bank Holiday in the Peak District is ruined by the tragic drowning of an eight-year-old girl in picturesque Dovedale. For Detective Constable Ben Cooper, a helpless witness to the tragedy, the incident is not only traumatic, but leads him to become involved in the tangled lives of the Neilds, the dead girl's family.As he gets to know them, Cooper begins to suspect that one of them is harbouring a...

The second in the series set in the Derbyshire Peak District, Dancing with the Virgins is a tense psychological follow-up to Stephen Booth’s acclaimed debut Black Dog.‘The body of the woman sprawled obscenely among the stones… She looked like a dead woman, dancing.’The ring of cairns known as the Nine Virgins has stood on the windswept moors of Derbyshire for centuries. Now, as winter closes in, a tenth figure is added – a body – and a modern tragedy is added to the dark legend that surrounds...

Guilt, sacrifice and redemption in a freezing Peak District winter in this tense psychological thriller from the acclaimed author of Black Dog: ‘A dark star may be born!’ Reginald HillIt wasn’t the easiest way to commit suicide. Marie Tennent seemed to have just curled up in the freezing snow on Irontongue Hill and stayed there until her body was frosted over like a supermarket chicken. And hers isn’t the only death the police have to contend with either – not after the discovery of a baby in...

Dark, intense and utterly compelling, Black Dog was an extraordinary first novel from a writer who has rapidly become the most promising crime author to emerge in the genre in years.‘Where Cooper stood was remote and isolated… but the smell that lingered under the trees was of blood’The long hot Peak District summer came to an end when they found Laura Vernon's body. But for local policeman Ben Cooper the work has just begun. His community is hiding a young girl’s killer and a past as dark...