his must be about the eighth of Stephen Booth's Derbyshire police procedural thrillers, set in the sometimes bleak, often lovely Peak District. His two well-known protagonists are Detective-Sergeant Diane Fry and DC Ben Cooper based in the fictional town of Edendale.
This story contains several very different themes, fox-hunting and the saboteurs, illegal horse trading for meat and oddly, the former Royal Observer Corps.
A man is found near an old abandoned building on the moor, dead from head injuries and after a search for his identity, is found to be a shady character who is known to be involved in buying horses, most of whom end up in the abattoir. The plot is complex and the characters numerous, but as always, all is eventually explained. There are some disturbing facts about the horse-meat exporting trade, which seems to be burgeoning on the continent - as well as some graphic descriptions of horse-slaughtering.
I always look forward to a Booth novel, especially as he is such a good writer, particularly in evoking the feel of the countryside. I have to say that this is not one of his best, as it was very slow going for at least the first half and I found the endless antipathy between the miserable Fry and the solicitous Cooper becoming a bit of a drag, especially as the root cause of their eternal feud never really gets explained. However, it remained a good read, even though it seems somewhat unrealistic for a multiple suspicious death investigation to be largely handled by a mere sergeant, with only the occasional languid appearance of her DI. In a case like this, DCIs and Supers would be crawling out of the woodwork!
Bernard Knight ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series
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