I was pleased to get another great Peak District mystery
in
the Cooper and Fry series. Local officer Ben Cooper
is by
now a Detective Sergeant, and he notes the rowdy change
that comes over scenic Edendale on weekend nights. Nowhere
is safe from the modern world, and with isolated houses,
violent burglars are rampaging, fearless.
THE DEVIL'S EDGE is a landscape feature, a wall of rock
which attracts climbers. Just under the Edge is a luxury
home where the latest burglary has gone badly wrong. A
wife lies dead, a husband seriously injured. The children
luckily were upstairs and unharmed. Ben has to stifle his
excitement at working on a major crime in his new post.
These burglars have to be stopped. Diane Fry meanwhile is
sitting on tedious management change discussion sessions,
hoping for a transfer to something more important but
knowing there is little chance.
The details of pretentious isolated houses, with electric
gates and high hedges, and price tags that prevent anyone
local from purchasing, ring sadly true. The new arrivals
don't shop locally or blend with the community. They
hardly
even speak to their neighbours. Family dynamics, odd
neighbours and foreign wealth jostle for attention. This
makes Ben Cooper's job all the more difficult as he looks
for witnesses and background information. Previous books
have focused on generations of rural cottage dwellers or
immigrants, so this is a good balance in portraying the
nature of the Peak villages nowadays. Ben's brother Matt
is
still trying to make a living on the dairy farm, with
increasingly less success, and now increased tension as
farmers fear burglars.
A newcomer to the cast is a welcome female face, Carol
Villiers, who has made her way to Ben's squad via the RAF
where she was an MP. She counterpoints Constable Gavin
Murfin's lugubrious humour perfectly. Author Stephen Booth
always keeps in touch with the ordinary people and how
their lives are evolving, with touches from hang-gliding
to
satellite images creating the town. Tensions and
misdirections keep the reader rapt as the tale of THE
DEVIL'S EDGE unfolds. Stephen Booth is no ordinary writer
of police procedural crime - he delivers Derbyshire to us
in its long past and swiftly changing present. This one's
a winner.
When nobody's home, the Savages roam ...
The newspapers call them the Savages: a band of home
invaders as merciless as they are stealthy. Usually they
don't leave a clue—but 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 a mountain ridge called the Devil's Edge, a
twisted game is under way, a game more ruthless than the
detectives can imagine.
Packed with nerve-jangling suspense and moody atmosphere,
this is a thriller to rival the very best of Peter
Robinson
and Peter James.
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