Black Dog
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3.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
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…
Reviews
‘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 the author
Stephen Booth was born in the Lancashire mill town of Burnley and has remained rooted to the Pennines during his career as a newspaper journalist. He lives with his wife Lesley in a former Georgian Dower house in Nottinghamshire and his interests include folklore, the Internet and walking in the hills of the Peak District. ‘Black Dog’ is his first novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The cryptic activities of eccentric, uncooperative murder suspect Harry Dickinson add depth to this intriguing first-time offering, a psychological suspense story from a British journalist. Dickinson is one of a triad of macabre old men who haunt the woods and countryside near Edendale in northern England's Peak District. Out walking his black Labrador one sweltering August evening, the retired miner finds a running shoe belonging to Laura Vernon, a 15-year-old reported missing from her mansion on the Mount. Investigating the case is a promising young local detective, Ben Cooper, whose heart is set on a sergeant's post also sought by the Edendale Police Division's icy new up-and-comer, Diane Fry. Personal troublesDCooper's mentally ill mother and memories of his heroic cop father's murder, and Fry's dim recollection of past terrorsDdistract the two from their work, but somehow they patch together a case, sexual tension building between them all the while. The list of suspects, including Dickinson and Laura's wealthy father, Graham Vernon, grows to include the Vernons' gardener and Mrs. Vernon's young lover; Laura's biker boyfriend; and a few business associates of the Vernons'. Cooper is sickened to learn that Vernon's male and female co-workers and clients of his financial consultancy business were often invited to the Mount for orgiesDand that a few may have included Laura. But Cooper, too, is demonstrating increasingly unprofessional behavior, which costs him dearly and deprives Fry of her promotion. Only his brother Matt understands that Cooper may be suffering from the mental "black dog" of his mother's schizophrenia. The leisurely pace and Dickinson's philosophical conversations with his friends on loyalty, death and television detective shows may disappoint readers of fast moving crime fiction, but Booth's intention here, at which he succeeds admirably, is to unveil secret lives against the seemingly placid background of a country village.
