#7 Ben Cooper/Diane Fry police procedural mystery set in the Peak District of the UK. Two major cases are plaguing the local cop shop--a house fire that killed a mother and her two children, determined later to be arson, and thus murder, and the professional-style killing of a sixty-ish reclusive woman in a small neighboring village. No one really knew Rose Shepherd, as she'd moved in just 10 months previously and 'kept herself to herself' as they say. Her history and paper trail was very brief, but Ben Cooper knows if he can find out where the enigmatic woman came from and who she was, he will find a motive for her murder. Diane concentrates on the fire, believing that if she can solve such a grisly, heart-wrenching crime, it will be a big feather in her cap towards promotion. Ben is in the beginnings of a relationship with a crime scene technician, Liz Petty, and also has to deal with his brother Matt's worries about the inheritability of schizophrenia, which their mother suffered from badly. I really like this series--the author does a great job of setting the scene in the beautiful Peak District, and I quite enjoy Ben Cooper's character. Diane Fry bugs the hell out of me, but she is at least consistently done. The one thing that I find sets my teeth on edge is that the dialogue at times sounds stilted and unnatural, the characters using each others' names in conversation when they are the only ones in the room and could only be talking to each other, for example. Who does that? But aside from that one flaw, Booth's stories always read and flow easily, although I figured the ending plot twist out about 2/3 of the way through so it wasn't much of a surprise. A-
The murder of a reclusive woman and the death of a mother and two children in a fire form the core of this seventh entry in this series.There were several turns – they weren’t abrupt enough or surprising enough to qualify as twists – that kept the story interesting. One of them I suspected (at least in part) before it appeared, one I didn’t.I was a bit disappointed in this book. While reading, I found myself asking, “Why didn’t you ask this question earlier?” on several occasions. It seemed as if Cooper and Fry had forgotten all their training and experience and were stumbling around like newly appointed detectives on their first case.Fry still aims digs at Cooper instead of treating him like the professional colleague he is, although they aren’t as rude here as they were in earlier books. And on several occasions, she actually cares about his welfare. Let’s hope she continues to move in that direction, because frankly her earlier attitude was wearing more than a bit thin. And Ben gets in a good lick of his own in this book.Ben deals with a side issue involving his brother and their mother’s illness that, while it added a bit of dimension to Ben’s character, added almost nothing to the novel and detracted from the main story.This is another long book at almost 600 pages but more of it is directly related to the crimes Fry and Cooper are investigating. Booth has pared back to some extent the long introspective passages and scenery descriptions that slowed earlier books in the series down a great deal. But he could do more in this area.Still, these books are interesting and engaging enough that I’ll keep reading them.
What do You think about Scared To Live (2009)?
Booth is another of those British authors who have a series of books with the same police officers in them and his are always a treat to read. I was sure that I had read more than one of his books during my 2015 reading challenge but it appears that I have only read "Dancing with the Virgins". This is #7 in the Cooper and Fry series and it was great entertainment. He has a way of telling a story that I really enjoy and the endings are never what you really would expect. I am now on the hunt for as many other of his books as I can find, something I always do when I find an author whose style I like.....I would recommend this series highly. These are less gloomy than Ian Rankin's books but just as well written.
—S. Lynham
This book was OK. There was a good plot, but it was revealed in an incoherent way, I felt. Why, for example, did we have a car exploded in the main street? It seems to have been just a distraction. I also found the detectives mannerisms a little intrusive. Perhaps if I had read the previous books in the series, it might have helped with that, but as often happens, I jumped in to a series in the middle. I also felt that the eventual killers were not totally plausible…. I don't see me reading the other books.
—Stuart
After reading mysteries of varying quality by writers unknown to me, it was a pleasure -- a comforting, familiar pleasure -- to pick up where I had left off in Stephen Booth's Cooper and Fry series several months ago. I devoured it.Then I lay back, somnolent from total satiation. That can be the only reason I took so long to write this review, for the book is good. In the previous books in this series, there had been much about Fry's or Cooper's personal stories woven throughout the mysteries, with angst and unhappy feelings dominating Fry's story. It was a relief that this book concentrated on the mysteries, with only a sliver of personal story. It's not that I didn't enjoy learning about these characters, what shaped them, how they came to be in Edendale, it's that it was time for a change-up and a lessening of the angst.The mysteries themselves were satisfying -- complex, engaging the mind, unfolding right to the end. And I was rather pleased with myself that I saw the final detail coming, although I did not solve the central whodunnit part. I saw some reviewers had complained that there was too much detail. But I had just read a book with too little, which is extremely unsatisfying. You could shrink the book down to almost novella size, like this other writer had done their story, but then you'd miss out on the nuances, the red herrings, the feeling of the Peak District, the characters coming to life and drawing you in to their lives, the emotions, the mood, the colours and smells and sounds of the events and the landscape. You'd miss out on caring what happens. It's the details that separate a so-so writer from the ones who absorb you into their stories.
—Shireen
