I'm under the impression that the author was striving to write a complex, three-dimensional, strong woman but, because in real life he viewed women as weird aliens, failed miserably. She's also a stroppy bitch, and not in a good way. She is a bizarre individual subject to inexplicable mood swings within the space of a few paragraphs and episodes of even stranger behavior. More of a problem is the rendering of the main female detective. This is Booth's first published novel, so perhaps he's gotten better since then.
However, despite the wealth of information I now know about the Pennines area of northern England, I didn't develop any sense of understanding of the place. I normally love reading mysteries in part as travelogue, as they let me visit parts of the world in their pages and get to see them as the inhabitants see them rather than as a tourist. I felt as though I were being force-fed, or as though I were reading the author's background notes that should not have been left in the final draft of the story. Not only are passages too full of unnecessary details that fail either to move the story forward or bring the setting alive, but on many pages every sentence is stuffed with extra information that doesn't need to be there. However, there were several things that consistently interrupted my ability to enjoy this book.įor one thing, the author infodumps with a heavy hand. The intersection of the "Black Dog" of local mythology and an actual black dog (or two) is also well done. In particular, a trio of very well drawn elderly male characters are like nothing else I've seen in the mystery genre or, really, anywhere. How frustrating! There were things here I really wanted to enjoy. He's represented British literature at the Helsinki Book Fair in Finland, appeared with Alexander McCall Smith at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival in Australia, filmed a documentary for 20th Century Fox on the French detective Vidocq, taken part in online chats for World Book Day, taught crime writing courses, and visited prisons to talk to prisoners about writing. In recent years, Stephen has become a Library Champion in support of the UK’s ‘Love Libraries’ campaign. The most recent title is FALL DOWN DEAD.Ī new Stephen Booth standalone novel with a historical theme, DROWNED LIVES, will be published in August 2019:
The novels are sold all around the world, with translations in 16 languages. The Crime Writers’ Association presented Stephen with the Dagger in the Library Award for “the author whose books have given readers most pleasure.” The Cooper & Fry series has won awards on both sides of the Atlantic, and Detective Constable Cooper has been a finalist for the Sherlock Award for Best Detective created by a British author. Stephen Booth is the author of 18 novels in the Cooper & Fry series, all set around England's Peak District, and a standalone novel DROWNED LIVES, published in August 2019.
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