Blind to the Bones: A Cooper & Fry Mystery (Cooper & Fry Mysteries) - Softcover

Booth, Stephen

3.84

2,007 ratings by Goodreads

9780062350459: Blind to the Bones: A Cooper & Fry Mystery (Cooper & Fry Mysteries)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062350455 ISBN 13: 9780062350459

Publisher: Witness Impulse, 2014

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A death in the family from hell brings detectives Fry and Cooper to a remote and unfriendly rural community in their fourth psychological thriller.

“And as it grew dark, Withens became almost entirely silent. Except for the screaming.”

A small village in the Peak District, Withens is troubled by theft and vandalism, mostly generated by a family of local delinquents, the Oxleys. Now the town is the focus of a murder investigation. A man’s body has been found on the bleak moors nearby, and the victim is an Oxley. To crack the case, DC Ben Cooper must break open the degenerate clan.

His boss, DS Diane Fry, is also in Withens. Grim new evidence has turned up in the case of a missing student, but her parents refuse to believe she could be dead.

The darkness in Withens’s heart is growing. And things are only going to get nastier ...

This taut, atmospheric thriller is perfect for fans of Patricia Cornwell and Peter James.

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Review:

Family troubles of all shapes and surprises keep the cops hopping and the tension high in English novelist Stephen Booth's fourth Ben Cooper/Diane Fry mystery, Blind to the Bones.

The most affecting of this novel's three plot lines concerns the disappearance of university student Emma Renshaw, who was last seen more than two years ago while on her way home to Derbyshire. Unable to accept that their daughter isn't merely late on the train, that she's more than likely dead, Howard and Sarah Renshaw have gone to extraordinary lengths to find her, consulting psychics and "bombarding the police with theories and suggestions, pleas and demands"--all for naught. But then, suddenly, Emma's blood-stained mobile phone is found, and the Renshaws' faith seems finally to be rewarded. Or is this just another opportunity for disappointment? Meanwhile, Detective Constable Cooper--posted temporarily (he hopes) to a rural crime squad--is investigating burglaries around the depressed old village of Withens, when the battered corpse of one of Emma's ex-housemates turns up on the nearby moors, his face blackened with theatrical make-up and stolen goods left behind in his car. Inquiries lead Cooper to a clannish local family with a history of trouble-making, and put him in the sights of a shadowy group called the Border Rats.

Booth's ability over the course of a story to transform some of his least suspicious players into the most devious (or vice-versa) and his appreciative portrayal of England's scenic Peak District both make for engrossing fiction. Blind to the Bones's subtlest but most intriguing element, though, may be its third plot thread, which finds Detective Sergeant Fry's long-lost, heroin-addicted sister turning up in Edendale, where she tries to enlist Cooper's help in convincing the hard-edged Diane to stop looking for her, once and for all. This track answers several questions about DS Fry's past while raising more--and promising new levels of character development in future installments of this series. --J. Kingston Pierce

About the Author:

Stephen Booth's fourteen novels featuring Cooper and Fry, all to be published by Witness, have sold over half a million copies around the world.

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