The Peak District author goes international with his latest e-release; police detectives Cooper and Fry take on two different cases which turn out to be linked. SCARED TO LIVE presents two different, equally brutal death scenes. In one, a young mother of two boys is killed in a house fire, with her children. A sniffer dog confirms traces of a petroleum product used to start the fire. The mother's grieving husband happened to be out, perhaps conveniently? Was it a coincidence that their youngest, a girl, was staying with her grandparents? How tragic it is that police always have to suspect the nearest and dearest.

In the second murder scene a reclusive woman who had bought a country cottage some months ago and fitted electric gates, locked windows and doors, is shot through her bedroom window. If she was hiding from someone, it looks as though they caught up with her. Now the police have to trace the killer of someone who had no contact with anyone.

A Bulgarian officer comes to assist when the cases are linked to organised crime in that country. Bulgaria, freed from Soviet rule, became thoroughly corrupt and impoverished, so as the officer explains, politicians are trying to clean up the country in order to join the European Union and get handouts. Unlike Greece, which proved to be corrupt in a conniving way, Bulgarian criminals are vicious and exploitative. Europol is looking for applicants, and Diane Fry gets interested in applying for the service.

Ben Cooper, the local man, again puts his knowledge to good use, but SCARED TO LIVE concentrates less on landscape than did the previous books. We see a festival on a river and a restored heritage cloth mill, a cablecar ride up a mountainside and a touristy funfair park. We can't help getting the impression that the dour sheep farmers featured at the start of this series are becoming scarce and the mountains of England no longer provide a living for such people. The police adapt and modernise, while crime is no longer local.

Stephen Booth knows his setting and shows us his people, from a scared shy woman afraid to venture out, to a country man on medication to stop the voices in his head. SCARED TO LIVE is far-reaching and intelligent, a foretaste of crime to come in Britain.