The Dead Place

Soon there will be a killing. Close your eyes and breathe the aroma. I can smell it right now, cant you? So powerful, so sweet. So irresistible. Its the scent of death…

The anonymous caller who taunts the Derbyshire Police with talk of an imminent killing seems to be just another hoaxer. But DS Diane Fry begins to take him seriously when a woman is snatched from a multi-storey car park. This was no opportunist attack but a carefully planned abduction - and its possible the chilling voice is telling the truth when it hints at earlier murders and bodies waiting to be found in the dead place.

DC Ben Cooper, meanwhile, has succeeded in finding a body - or rather, a collection of bones. This comes as a shock to the deceaseds family, for Audrey Steele should have left no bones. Eighteen months ago, after dying from natural causes, Audrey was cremated.

Their investigations lead Fry and Cooper into the world of those whose lives revolve around death. And finally, in a boarded-up ancestral home that has long been the stuff of legend in the White Peak, a crypt full of skulls yields it dark secrets.

"Eminently readable with clever twists and turns throughout, Stephen Booth leads Cooper and Fry and reader alike down a spiral of unbelievable horror and corruption." – The Book Place

THE DEAD PLACE is the 6th novel in the multiple award-winning Cooper & Fry series, set in Englands beautiful and atmospheric Peak District.

* A finalist for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award.