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.Dying to Sin

by: Stephen Booth

May 06, 2008
A tourist advert for the Peak District of Derbyshire this aint! It's cold, it's wet, it's bleak mid winter and the natives are unfriendly and uncooperative. Detectives Fry and Cooper have two unidentified skeletons on their hands at a deserted farm in the middle of nowhere. Slowly they piece together a tale of crime and violence coupled with superstition and "The Old Religion". Meanwhile the body count starts to rise. To add to their misery, they've a new boss who is out to stamp her authority on the local force.

One gets the impression that maybe this is a bit more like how real police work goes, albeit condensed into a relatively few days. But don't get me wrong, despite the downbeat tone of the book, I thoroughly enjoyed it and ... Read More:
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.The Dead Place

by: Stephen Booth

February 01, 2006
I am a great Peter Robinson fan who is always on the look out for new authors. I don't feel I found I found a substitute in this book. It didn't grip me from the first page and I found it slow going. I felt the chapters didn't flow, the characters weren't interesting enough and were too numerous. I did stick it out to the end as I wanted to know 'whodunnit', but was quite glad to reach the last page. I have Dancing with the virgins at home and am hoping for better things with that. Any author reccomendations gratefully accepted.
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.Blood on the Tongue

by: Stephen Booth

April 07, 2003
this is the first time I have read anything by Stephen Booth and I will be looking out for more. This crime thriller spun a web of intrigue which was hard to leave to do the mundane things like eat, drink and go to work, let alone sleep, all with the most impeccable writing and characterisation. A lesson to all crime writers, this is the way to do it.
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.Claws (Crime Express)

by: Stephen Booth

October 01, 2007
I liked Claws by Stephen Booth. This was a different offering from Stephen in so far as we didn't encounter Diane Fry in this story. Tracey Udall who was featured in Blind to the Bones worked on this particular case with Cooper and as I read I got the feeling that Tracey is a 'lonely' character and this is my opinion that Udall looked towards Cooper for support.

As many readers of Stephen's novels featuring Cooper and Fry know that Stephen is excellent at description and in this short story this was evident in describing the illegal haul. The descriptions of the moorland where Cooper found himself was excellent and on the moorland where it was cold you could feel the effects of the weather as you read.

Only 96 pages in Claws but very ... Read More:
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.Dancing with the Virgins

by: Stephen Booth

March 18, 2002

A newspaper and magazine journalist for over 25 years, Stephen Booth was born in the English Pennine town of Burnley. He was brought up on the coast at Blackpool, where he began his career in journalism by editing his school magazine and wrote his first 'novel' at the age of 13.

Stephen gave up journalism in 2001 to write crime novels full time. He and his wife Lesley live in a former Georgian dower house near Retford, Nottinghamshire, in Robin Hood country.

The Peak District can be a beautiful place in summer and attracts visitors from miles around and one of the attractions that draws people to it, even though it is in one of the more remote areas is a ring of standing stone called the Nine Virgins. They carry a dark legend from ... Read More:
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.Blind to the Bones

by: Stephen Booth

March 22, 2004

A newspaper and magazine journalist for over 25 years, Stephen Booth was born in the English Pennine mill town of Burnley. He was brought up on the coast at Blackpool. Stephen gave up journalism in 2001 to write crime novels full time.

Withens is a small village in the Peak District and like many other small town and villages it is troubled by theft and vandalism, but Withens problems stem from mainly one local family, the Oxleys, a family from hell. Now the village is the focus of a murder investigation. A young man's body has been discovered out on the cold and desolate moors nearby and the man is a member of the family from hell, he is an Oxley.

Police are also trying to solve the mystery of a young girl who vanished two years ago. Some ... Read More:
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.Black Dog

by: Stephen Booth

March 05, 2001
Dull and not very exciting, this book is leaden, clunky and not much of a mystery. The only mystery is the large number of good reviews it gets. Still, it might make a decent TV detective as the scenery will be nice. Ho hum.
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.Scared to Live

by: Stephen Booth

February 05, 2007
I'd never read anything of Stephen Booth's before and thought this looked promising - four suspicious deaths (one of them especially in very mysterious circumstances) within the first few pages. However, the story dragged on and on and I found it difficult to concentrate on the plot. Had I not had a holiday in Hartington, not far from Matlock, a couple of years ago I think I would have given up about halfway through, but the descriptions of Matlock Bath, the nearby shopping centre in an old converted mill, and the surroundings which were familiar to me helped to hold my interest. By the time I got to the end (and it's quite a long book) I found I really didn't care very much whodunnit, although why they dunnit was more to the point. Having read the other reviews of this book, I will ... Read More:
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.One Last Breath

by: Stephen Booth

April 04, 2005
I can honestly say that by the time I'd finished this book, I had not a clue what had happened in it. I'm a careful reader, and I usually manage to follow even the most complicated of plots, but at the end of this novel I didn't know who'd killed whom and why, and nor did I care. I spent some time trying to go over it all in my mind, but I couldn't make it add up, and I can't say I really enjoyed reading this book. There was something drab, squalid and depressing about the writing style, and Ben and Diane, the two police protagonists, made me want to sigh deeply every time they appeared. This is the sort of book that might have been written by one's long-winded and rather dull grandfather.
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.The Kill Call

by: Stephen Booth

April 06, 2009
I can honestly say that by the time I'd finished this book, I had not a clue what had happened in it. I'm a careful reader, and I usually manage to follow even the most complicated of plots, but at the end of this novel I didn't know who'd killed whom and why, and nor did I care. I spent some time trying to go over it all in my mind, but I couldn't make it add up, and I can't say I really enjoyed reading this book. There was something drab, squalid and depressing about the writing style, and Ben and Diane, the two police protagonists, made me want to sigh deeply every time they appeared. This is the sort of book that might have been written by one's long-winded and rather dull grandfather.
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