Black Dog (Cooper and Fry Crime Series) - Softcover

Booth, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006514324 ISBN 13: 9780006514329

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2001

Synopsis

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 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 suspect.

But Cooper's local knowledge and instincts are about to face an even greater challenge. The ambitious DC Diane Fry has been called in from another division, a woman as ruthless as she is attractive...

About this title

Review:

Stephen Booth's first novel Black Dog is an impressive portrait of two sorts of policing. Ben is a local man who knows everybody and perhap scares too much, while Diane is a stranger wherever she goes and is perhaps too cold-blooded; when they find themselves rivals for promotion, and colleagues on a difficult case, breaking strain is going to be reached sooner or later. Spoiled, young Laura Vernon is missing, soon to be found dead, and the question soon arises: is she only, or even, the first? Retired quarryman Harry found the body and perhaps knows more than he is letting on, but he will do anything rather than tell the police more than he has to. The Vernons' gardener is missing, a thuggish young man rather too fond of showing off his muscles--what does he know? What went on at the Vernons' smart cocktail parties and what do Harry and his friends talk about over their beer in the pub? This is an ingenious dark little mystery in which there may be solutions to problems, but no cures; Ben and Diane are two of the more interestingly flawed young cops of recent crime fiction. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

‘Stephen Booth’s ‘Black Dog’sinks its teeth into you and doesn’t let you go. A dark star may be born!’
Reginald Hill

‘In this atmospheric debut, Stephen Booth makes high summer in Derbyshire as dark and terrifying as midwinter’
Val McDermid

‘An exceedingly good first novel: wholly engrossing, it has well-drawn characters and a real sense of place’
Evening Standard

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0006514324
• ISBN 13: 9780006514329
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 530