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    Blood on the Tongue: A Cooper & Fry Mystery
    Unavailable
    Blood on the Tongue: A Cooper & Fry Mystery
    Unavailable
    Blood on the Tongue: A Cooper & Fry Mystery
    Ebook560 pages9 hours

    Blood on the Tongue: A Cooper & Fry Mystery

    By Stephen Booth

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Blood on the Tongue is a complex, atmospheric police procedural perfect for fans of Ian Rankin and Peter Robinson.

    It's a new year for Peak District detectives Ben Cooper and Diane Fry, and that means new murders to solve in the icy depths of a bitter winter in Edendale, Derbyshire.

    It isn't the easiest way to commit suicide, but the dead woman seems to have simply curled up in the freezing snow and lain there until her heart stopped. There was no one to observe her death but the foxes and the hares. Yet she is riddled with bruises. Cooper and Fry are put on the case but they have as much questions about the abuse the woman might have suffered in life as they do the circumstances of her death.

    The unidentified body of a dead man is found by the roadside. And an intriguing young woman arrives in Edendale desperate to solve a decades old puzzle that has haunted her family: a Royal Air Force bomber crashed into Edendale, in the same spot where the frozen corpse was found, killing everybody on board except for the pilot, who supposedly walked away from the wreck and was never seen again.  With colds and flus and holiday plans thinning out the ranks of the Edendale police force, Cooper and Fry are scrambling to find an explanation for the two recent deaths while being pulled deeper into the mysteries of the past.

    Rich with multiple intertwining mysteries, this Cooper and Fry thriller has all of psychological suspense and three dimensional characters that fans have come to expect from Stephen Booth—a master of his craft.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateDec 3, 2013
    ISBN9780062302007
    Unavailable
    Blood on the Tongue: A Cooper & Fry Mystery
    Author

    Stephen Booth

    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.

    Read more from Stephen Booth

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    Reviews for Blood on the Tongue

    4/5

    9 ratings7 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Third in the Cooper and Fry police procedural series, set in the Peak District in England. This book takes place in winter and combines several plot threads dealing with deaths both new and old (World War II-vintage old). Excellent characterization, plot and setting; one of the best mysteries I read in 2007.
    • 2/5
      A Canadian woman asks the police of England’s Peak District for assistance into the investigation of the war-time crash of an air craft in the area. Her grandfather had been the pilot but had disappeared from the accident site and never been seen in the 57 years years since the night of the crash. Of the remaining crew only one person, a Polish man, survived and is still in the area today. The police hierarchy refuses to assist the Canadian because they’re busy. A man’s body has been cut in half by a snow plough, another man’s been beaten up and, although they don’t know it yet, a young woman has died in the snow too. However DC Ben Cooper is intrigued by the Canadian’s quest and, almost against his own will, becomes involved in investigating the story. His boss, DS Diane Fry, is angry at him about that.

      As I mentioned the other day, this book dragged for me. Seriously dragged. Every person’s clothes, every building, every location seemed to be described in minute, unnecessary detail. It soon became impossible to tell which people and events were crucial to the story because every body and every thing was given the same detailed introduction. And then there were the tangents. For example at one point a character notices a police car has the force’s website address written on it which is followed by a long description of what one would find on the website. None of which is even remotely relevant to the story. Alone this example wouldn’t bother me but it is one of dozens of such tangents that detracted from the flow of the narrative and turned what should have been an interesting story into a directionless amble. At one point Police realise that the woman who died in the snow probably had a baby but they don’t seem to put much effort into locating the child, or at least no more than they do for anything else, which seems highly improbable to me.

      I don’t think this is an issue of length or pace. I have loved longer books and slower ones. This is an issue of storytelling where knowing what to leave out is as important, if not more so, as what is included. For me anyway story telling is about being taken on a journey and here I felt as if I’d been dropped in the middle of a forest and had to find my own way out without the benefit of a compass or the ability to leave a breadcrumb trail. I found my way out in the end but I’d taken so many wrong turns I’d lost interest in the outcome.

      I did like Ben Cooper who is a far cry from the alcohol-addled, ex-wife trailing cop so prevalent in crime fiction. His introspection and somewhat naive outlook were refreshing and the way he and his experiences were used to explore themes of family and community was first rate. There appeared to be some kind of unresolved issue between him and Diane Fry but I really couldn’t work out whether it was professional or personal (it seemed to be both at different times). Perhaps this is explained more in the first two books in this series which I haven’t read. Regardless, I neither liked Fry nor found her particularly credible but I really can’t explain why.

      I really wanted to like Blood on the Tongue as Booth’s books have been recommended by many people whose tastes I trust. Although I did enjoy meeting Ben Cooper I didn’t enjoy it enough to make me come back for more so this series is one I’ll just have to agree to disagree about.

    • 1/5
      I found that the detail was to much to get past to find out who dunit in the end.
    • 4/5
      Cooper and Fry investigate two seemingly unrelated murders but the answer lies deep in the past. In 1945 an RAF bomber crashed on Iron tongue Hill and the missing pilot was declared a deserter. His granddaughter from Canada appears seeking the assistance of the police in finding out what really happened. A diverting read.
    • 5/5
      First 4 or 5 were excellent- well written, good sense of place and sympathetic characters. Last few have not been as consistently well done, but I still like them
    • 5/5
      Crime novel set in the fictional town of Edendale in the Peak District with strongly drawn characters, police detectives DC Ben Cooper and DS Diane Fry. Great background, believable story about WWII plane crash in a Peak District reservoir.
    • 4/5
      A crime fiction novel set in the fictional town of Edendale in the Peak District (UK) and following police detectives DC Ben Cooper and DS Diane Fry. Not a world beater, but a good, solid, enjoyable british crime novel. It's semi-rural setting makes a refreshing change from most crime novels, and it's not as dark as a lot of similar crime fiction.