As helicopters search Northern England's Peak District for fifteen year-old Laura Vernon, Detective Constable Ben Cooper quietly dreads the worst. And when her body is found in the woods, Cooper's investigation begins with a short list of markedly uncooperative suspects: retired miner Harry Dickinson, whose black Labrador discovered Laura's body, and Laura's wealthy parents. Uneasily teamed with ambitious newcomer Detective Constable Diane Fry, Cooper tests a town's family ties, friendships, and loyaties—and finds that in order to understand the present, they must unearth the past.

Stephen Booth's award-winning novel, Black Dog, was hailed as "an impressive performance" (The Denver Post). Now, Constables Ben Cooper and Diane Fry must contend with a killer whose motives are shrouded in bloody history. DANCING WITH THE VIRGINS In a remote part of Northern England's Peak District stand the Nine Virgins—ancient stone monoliths that harbor dark legends. Now, another figure has joined the a young cyclist, her lifeless limbs arranged in a mocking dance. The killing eerily resembles an earlier attack that left a woman savagely disfigured. For Detectives Cooper and Fry, there are too many questions with no answers. Was there a prior connection between the two victims? What was the precious object that one of them carried? And who are the two mysterious drifters who practice strange rituals? All that Cooper and Fry know for certain is that innocent blood has been spilled on the barren moors—and that the killing has only begun in the shadow of the Virgins....

The weather is cold and the clues no warmer as Peak District detectives Ben Cooper and Diane Fry tackle a medley of mysteries—each one knottier than the last—in English author Stephen Booth's haunting third novel, Blood on the Tongue. The unidentified body of a dead man has turned up on a frosty roadside. An abused woman is found curled in the snow on nearby Irontongue Hill, an apparent suicide. And there's the lingering puzzle of a Royal Air Force bomber that crashed into Irontongue back in 1945, killing everyone on board except for the pilot, who reportedly walked away from the wreckage... and was never heard from again. With leave and sickness decimating the ranks of the Edendale police force, all hands are needed to solve the modern deaths. But constable Cooper finds himself distracted by the World War II tragedy, in large part because of a beguiling young Canadian, the granddaughter of that missing pilot, who's come to Edendale determined to clear her ancestor's name. Not surprisingly, these various cases eventually intertwine. But how they're linked by time and tragedy provides the intrigue here. Equally involving is the prickly alliance between Cooper, the "too bloody nice" local lad, and his superior, the emotionally guarded outsider, Fry. Plotted for maximum psychological suspense, teeming with singular secondary characters, and capitalizing on Britain's still-poignant memories of the last world war, Blood on the Tongue is an ambitious and remarkably mature work that delivers on the promise Booth showed in his first novel, Black Dog. —J. Kingston Pierce

The villagers of Withens are dying. Emma Renshaw vanished two years ago, her body never found. Now her former housemate has been bludgeoned, his remains discovered near a deserted railway tunnel. Is there a link between the two? While Detective Sergeant Diane Fry focuses on Emma’s possible murder, her colleague Ben Cooper investigates a series of burglaries. Only one family seems the Oxleys. Descended from workmen who built the ancient tunnels beneath the village, they stick close to their own–and keep their secrets closer. Caught in the tangle of death and deception are Cooper and Fry. Their personal history and professional relationship have blurred before, and will again, as their cases converge in the most unsettling ways...

Set in England’s legendary Peak District, Stephen Booth’s acclaimed mysteries tell tales of men and women under siege by both ordinary life and extraordinary crime. Now, in a stunning, fascinatingly intelligent novel, Booth’s uneasy young policeman, Ben Cooper, encounters an enigma that begins with a shocking murder and a victim’s . . . One Last Breath Around the ancient cave system in Derbyshire are thronging tourists, a medieval castle, and the thriving town of Castleton. With its underground tunnels and caverns, it’s the perfect place for a man to hide–or vanish. Detective Constable Ben Cooper and Detective Sergeant Diane Fry are looking for such a man, one who is on a rampage of revenge. After thirteen years in prison, Mansell Quinn has emerged a man enraged. Hours after violating his parole, Quinn is the chief suspect in a fresh murder. And his original sin–the brutal killing of his lover–still haunts the valley. Because Quinn has always maintained his innocence, the people who lined up against him then are in dire danger now. Ben may be one of those people, for he is the son of the cop who had arrested Quinn thirteen years earlier. But while his department races to find Quinn, Ben wonders if the man was indeed guilty of the first crime. Even when another new victim is found, Ben stubbornly clings to the old case–and makes himself an open target for a killer. For Ben, the real story of Mansell Quinn is as hidden as the caves beneath them. His search for answers will lead him on a twisting, harrowing journey through that maze of darkness–into the shocking light of truth. From the Hardcover edition.

“This killing will be a model of perfection. An accomplishment to be proud of. And it could be tonight or maybe next week. But it will be soon. I promise.” The anonymous phone calls indicate a disturbed mind with an unnatural passion for death. Cooper and Fry are hoping against hope that the caller is just a harmless crank having some sick fun. But the clues woven through his disturbing messages point to the possibility of an all-too-real crime . . . especially when a woman vanishes from an office parking garage. But it’s the mystery surrounding an unidentified female corpse left exposed in the woods for over a year that really has the detectives worried. Whoever she might have been, the dead woman is linked to the mystery caller, whose description of his twisted death rituals matches the bizarre manner in which the body was found. And the mystery only deepens when Cooper obtains a positive I.D. and learns that the dead woman was never reported missing and that she definitely wasn’t murdered. As the killer draws them closer into his confidence, Ben and Diane learn everything about his deadly obsessions except what matters his identity and the identity of his next victim...

Detective Constable Ben Cooper and Detective Sergeant Diane Fry must uncover the secrets of two grim murder scenes in England's Peak District—one inexplicable...and the other unspeakable. How do you investigate the murder of a woman without a life? That is the challenge facing Cooper and Fry when a reclusive agoraphobic is found shot to death in her home by someone who took an exceptional amount of care in executing her murder. With no friends, no family, and virtually no contact with the outside world, the dead woman may have simply been an unlucky victim of a random homicide. Or was she hiding from a past that had finally come out of hiding to kill her? At virtually the same time, a raging house fire claims the life of a young mother and two of her children. But as the debris is cleared, troubling questions remain in the ashes. Among them, how did the fire start, where was the husband at two a.m. the day of the blaze, and was it really the fire that killed his family? Now, as Cooper faces the reemergence of a dark secret he'd hoped to forget, and Fry copes with problems both personal and professional, a horrific possibility begins to take shape: what if the two investigations are somehow connected? A killer is stalking the Peak District whose motives are a mystery and whose methods are unpredictable. And his next victims could very well be the only two cops who can stop him.

For decades, Pity Wood Farm has been a source of employment for poor workers passing through Rakedale, migrants with lives as abject as the labour they sought. But now it seems a far worse fate may have befallen some of those who came upon this isolated community. Routine building work at the farm has unearthed a grisly discovery: a human hand preserved in clay. When police dig up the farmyard, they find not one, but two bodies – and several years between their burials. With pressure from a new Superintendent and scant forensic evidence to aid them, DS Diane Fry and DC Ben Cooper have only the memories of local people to piece together the history of the farm. In a case as cold as the ground, Cooper finds himself drawn to a desperate theory: that somewhere, there lies a third body which holds the key to these dreadful crimes.

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 follows a complex trail of her own to unravel the shady business interests of the murder victim, Cooper realizes that the answer to the case might lie deep in the past. History is everywhere around him in the Peak District landscape—particularly in the 'plague village' of Eyam, where an outbreak of Black Death has been turned into a modern-day tourist attraction. But, even as the final solution is revealed, both Fry and Cooper find themselves having to face up to the disturbing reality of the much more recent past.

A May Bank Holiday in the Peak District is ruined by the tragic drowning of an eight-year-old girl among crowds of visitors in the tourist hotspot of 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 secret—a secret that the whole family might be willing to cover up. Meanwhile, Detective Sergeant Diane Fry has a journey of her own to make—a journey back to her roots. As she finds herself drawn into an investigation of her own among the inner city streets of Birmingham, Fry realises there is only one person she can rely on to provide the help she needs. But that man is Ben Cooper, and he's back in Derbyshire, where his suspicions are leading him towards a shocking discovery on the banks of another Peak District river.

The newspapers call them the a band of home invaders as merciless as they are stealthy. Usually they don't leave a clue. This time, they've left a body. The first victim is found sprawled on her kitchen floor, blood soaking the terracotta tiles. Before long, another corpse is discovered, dead of fright. As the toll rises, it's up to DC Ben Cooper and DS Diane Fry to track down the killers. But the enemy isn't who they think it is. Beneath the sinister shadow of the mountain ridge called the Devil's Edge, a twisted game is in play ? a game more ruthless than the detectives can imagine...Packed with nerve-jangling suspense and moody atmosphere, The Devil's Edge is a thriller to rival the very best of Peter Robinson and Peter James.

In the wild crags of the Dark Peak moorland, a ruthless conflict has been raging for years. The discovery of an illegal haul from the bedroom of a terraced house is a clue to what might be at stake - perhaps the entire future of one of the most prized landscapes in the Peak District National Park. For young Derbyshire police detective D.C. Ben Cooper, an assignment to the Rural Crime Team means stepping into the middle of the conflict, without being quite sure whose side he's on. The predators come in all shapes and sizes. And in this battle, not all the victims will be human...

DS Ben Cooper comes closer to death than he ever has before in the 12th Cooper/Fry case As moorland fires sweep across the Peak District national park, hundreds of firefighters and park rangers battle to prevent flames reaching a remote inn, once a famous landmark, now abandoned and boarded up. The blaze is just one of a series of random acts of arson which have destroyed miles of heather moorland, and once the flames have died, a grim surprise awaits DS Ben Cooper and DI Diane Fry—a body, dead for years.

A summer of endless rain in the Peak District leaves the officers of Derbyshire's criminal investigation department with a problem. They have discovered a man's body lying in shallow water, but torrential downpours have swollen the rivers and flooded the roads, making travel difficult and forensic examination impossible. And that's not all. The absence of Detective Cooper, on extended leave after an arson attack, has left a serious gap. Detective Fry is a reluctant temporary replacement, but now their makeshift team is about to be tested to the limit. The fatal events of one damp August night are likely to remain shrouded in mystery if they can't track down a car glimpsed only as a dark outline in the rain by a passerby. When the drops turn into a deluge, loyalties among the officers will be put under intolerable strain as they try to solve their toughest case yet. And that's before it emerges that Detective Cooper is not at home recuperating, but has vanished into thin air . . (

The old Corpse Bridge is the route taken for centuries by mourners from villages on the western fringes of Derbyshire to a burial ground across the River Dove, now absorbed into the landscaped parkland of a stately home. When Earl Manby, the landowner, announces plans to deconsecrate the burial ground to turn it into a car park for his holiday cottages, bodies begin to appear once again on the road to the Corpse Bridge. Is there a connection with the Earl's plans? Or worse, is there a terrifying serial killer at work? Back in his job after the traumatic events of previous months, Detective Sergeant Ben Cooper knows that he must unravel the mystery of the Corpse Bridge if he's going to be able to move on with his life. As the pressure builds, Ben doesn't know who he can trust and, when the case reaches breaking point, he has to make a call that could put everything - and everyone - at risk...

For the tiny Peak District hamlet of Shawhead, there's only one road in and one road out. Its residents are accustomed to being cut off from the world by snow or floods. But when a lorry delivering animal feed is found jammed in the narrow lane, with no sign of the driver except for a blood-stained cab, it's the beginning of something much more sinister. Detective Inspector Ben Cooper must attempt to unravel the history of secrets, lies and loyalties that will lead to the truth behind the missing lorry driver. But the residents of Shawhead are not used to having strangers in their midst and, while getting to grips with staff changes in E Division, Ben's way forward is far from clear. Will he turn to Detective Sergeant Diane Fry, now working in Special Operations at Nottingham's Major Crimes Unit, for help when the case takes a dramatic turn? A truly outstanding mystery that's packed with foreboding Peak District atmosphere, The Murder Road is a suspense-filled read that reaches a stunningly clever conclusion.

For fans of Broadchurch, Louise Penny, and Peter Robinson comes a spellbinding new novel from internationally bestselling author Stephen Booth Residents of the Peak District are used to tourists descending on its soaring hills and brooding valleys. However, this summer brings a different kind of visitor to the idyllic landscape, leaving behind bodies and secrets. A series of suicides throughout the Peaks throws Detective Inspector Ben Cooper and his team in Derbyshire’s E Division into a race against time to find a connection to these seemingly random acts—with no way of predicting where the next body will turn up. Meanwhile, in Nottingham Detective Sergeant Diane Fry finds a key witness has vanished . . . But what are the mysterious Secrets of Death? And is there one victim whose fate wasn’t suicide at all?

M aster crime writer Stephen Booth ventures into the Peak District's dark subterranean world for a brand new, stunning and gasp-inducing Cooper & Fry thriller. 'A modern master' Guardian How do you prove a murder without a body? Ten years ago, Reece Bower was accused of killing his wife, a crime he always denied. Extensive police searches near his home in Bakewell found no trace of Annette Bower's remains, and the case against him collapsed. But now memories of the original investigation have been resurrected for Detective Inspector Ben Cooper - because Reece Bower himself has disappeared, and his new wife wants answers. Cooper can't call on the Major Crime Unit and DS Diane Fry for help unless he can prove a murder took place - impossible without a body. As his search moves into the caves and abandoned mines in the isolated depths of Lathkilldale, the question who would want revenge for the death of Annette Bower?

Dramatic . . . gripping' The TimesThe dramatic, gripping new Cooper & Fry crime thriller from bestseller Stephen Booth sees the stunning Peak District prove fatal for one walking party.They knew the danger, but they went anyway... "Almost before she'd stopped breathing, a swirl of mist snaked across her legs and settled in her hair, clutching her in its chilly embrace, hiding her body from view. It would be hours before she was found." The mountain of Kinder Scout offers the most incredible views of the Peak District, but when thick fog descends there on a walking party led by enigmatic Darius Roth, this spectacular landscape is turned into a death trap that claims a life.For DI Ben Cooper however, something about the way Faith Matthew fell to her death suggests it was no accident, and he quickly discovers more than one of the hikers may have had reason to murder their companion.To make things worse, his old colleague DS Diane Fry finds herself at centre of an internal investigations storm that threatens to drag Cooper down with it. 'Makes high summer as terrifying as midwinter'Val McDermid'Crime writing at its finest'Daily Mail'A modern master' Guardian'A first rate mysterySunday Telegraph'Ingenious Plotting and richly atmospheric'Reginald Hill