The Dead Place

“This killing will be a model of perfection. An accomplishment to be proud of. And it could be tonight or maybe next week. But it will be soon. I promise.”

The anonymous phone calls indicate a disturbed mind with an unnatural passion for death. Cooper and Fry are hoping against hope that the caller is just a harmless crank having some sick fun. But the clues woven through his disturbing messages point to the possibility of an all-too-real crime . . . especially when a woman vanishes from an office parking garage.

But it’s the mystery surrounding an unidentified female corpse left exposed in the woods for over a year that really has the detectives worried. Whoever she might have been, the dead woman is linked to the mystery caller, whose description of his twisted death rituals matches the bizarre manner in which the body was found. And the mystery only deepens when Cooper obtains a positive I.D. and learns that the dead woman was never reported missing and that she definitely wasn’t murdered. As the killer draws them closer into his confidence, Ben and Diane learn everything about his deadly obsessions except what matters most: his identity and the identity of his next victim. . . .

Publishers Weekly

In the sixth circuitously plotted police procedural from British author Booth (after One Last Breath), Det. Constable Ben Cooper and his boss, Sgt. Diane Fry, pursue a possible serial killer who leaves haunting phone messages about impending murders, flesh eaters and decomposition at the Derbyshire police station. Cooper and Fry chase down all sorts of dead ends: a woman who disappears from a local car park, another whose body is found in the woods, and skeletal remains discovered on a hilltop. None of the crimes appears to be the killer's work, but they all may be connected in disjointed ways to a local funeral parlor whose business has dropped off significantly in recent years. Booth's meandering style lots of subplots and droll diversions may not be to everyone's liking. Some readers may also be put off by the lack of chemistry between the earnest and bumbling Cooper and the cranky and aloof Fry. (May)

Stephen Booth is a two-time winner of the Barry Award for Best British Crime Novel. He is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Black Dog and Dancing with the Virgins. Other bestsellers in his Cooper and Fry series include Blood on the Tongue, One Last Breath, and Blind to the Bones, which earned him the prestigious Dagger in the Library Award. A former journalist, Stephen Booth lives in Nottinghamshire, England.