The Kill Call

THE KILL CALL is the 9th novel in the multiple award-winning Cooper & Fry crime series, set in England's beautiful and atmospheric Peak District On a rain-swept Derbyshire moor, hounds from the local foxhunt find the body of a well-dressed man whose head has been crushed. Yet an anonymous 999 caller reports the same body lying half a mile away. Called in to investigate the discovery, E Division detectives DS Diane Fry and DC Ben Cooper become entangled in the violent world of hunting and hunt saboteurs, horse theft and a little-known sector of the meat trade. As Fry follows a complex trail of her own to unravel the shady business interests of the murder victim, Cooper realises that the answer to the case might lie deep in the past. History is everywhere around him in the Peak District landscape - particularly in the 'plague village' of Eyam, where an outbreak of Black Death has been turned into a modern-day tourist attraction. But, even as the final solution is revealed, both Fry and Cooper find themselves having to face up to the disturbing reality of the much more recent past. PRAISE FOR THE COOPER AND FRY SERIES: "Suspenseful and supremely engaging. Booth does a wonderful job." - Los Angeles Times "Simultaneously classic, contemporary and haunting." - Otto Penzler, Mysterious Bookshop, New York "Makes high summer in Derbyshire as dark and terrifying as midwinter." - Val McDermid, award-winning crime novelist "Intelligent and substantive crime fiction, rich with complex characters." - Library Journal "Booth has firmly joined the elite of Britain's top mystery writers." - Florida Sun-Sentinel "Crime fiction for the thinking man or woman, and damnably hard to put down." - January Magazine "Highly recommended - a great series " - Seattle Mystery Books "Ben Cooper and Diane Fry are the most interesting team to arrive on the mystery scene in a long while." - Rocky Mountain News "One of our best story tellers." - Sunday Telegraph "There are few, if any, contemporary writers who do this as well as Stephen Booth." - Arena magazine "Booth delivers some of the best crime fiction in the UK." - Manchester Evening News "Booth's aim is to portray the darkness below the surface... in this he succeeds wonderfully well." - Mark Billingham, crime novelist "If you read only one new crime writer this year, he's your man." - Yorkshire Post