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 piteous history?Or does the answer lie elsewhere, hidden in the ground, and still waiting to be discovered?
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 the wreckage of an old Airforce bomber, and the body of a man dumped by a roadside.As if three bodies on her hands isn’t enough, snow and ice have left half of ‘E’ Division out of action and Diane Fry is forced to partner DC Gavin Murfin. She and Ben Cooper were never a match made in heaven, but next to Murfin, working with Ben starts to look like a dream.He’s on a trail of his own, though – and one as cold as the Peak District January. In an equally bitter winter in 1945 an RAF bomber crashed on Irontongue Hill killing everyone except the pilot, who walked away and disappeared. Now his grand-daughter, Alison Morrissey, is in Derbyshire desperate to clear his name, and Ben can’t help taking an interest.But is a fifty-year-old mystery really the best use of police time? Or does a vicious attack in the dark Edendale backstreets prove that the trail’s not quite as cold as he’d thought? Could the past be the only clue to present violence as an icy winter looks set to get even chillier?
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 is an Oxley. To crack the case, DC Ben Cooper must break open the delinquent clan.His boss, DS Diane Fry, is also in Withens. Grim new evidence has turned up in the case of a missing student but her parents refuse to believe she could be dead.The darkness in Withens's heart is growing. And things are only going to get nastier…
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 the stones.There’s no shortage of suspects, each with their own guilty secret, but what DS Fry and DC Cooper lack is any kind of motive. As they search separately for answers, it seems the reasons for the strange behaviour of the moor’s inhabitants may lie somewhere in the past, in a terrible crime yet to be discovered…