Stephen Booth is the CWA Dagger winning English author of the Cooper and Fry series of crime novels. These follow Derbyshire police detectives Ben Cooper and Diane Fry as they solve crime and murder in the Peak District near Sheffield, and so far there have been eighteen novels. The Devil's Edge is number eleven, and that is where I'm picking up the storyline.
A series of home invasions by a gang dubbed the Savages has the Peak District on edge. The small town of Riddings is tucked under a large cliff named the Devil's Edge, a favourite spot for climbers and hikers. While the kids are occupied upstairs, a couple is attacked and killed in the night, with only local snoop Mr. Gamble as witness. DS Ben Cooper is paired with newcomer Carol Villiars of the RAF to investigate the strip of wealthy neighbours in their estate homes along the valley. They all dismiss the police, nothing to see here, as much as they avoid each other and maintain privacy. New to the series, I was surprised Diane Fry was not Cooper's partner, but his adversary. They may have worked together in past novels, but she has escaped out of Derbyshire for the time being, before being called in again for this case. Abrasive and irritated, she makes no friends, but gets her job done. Cooper is a local boy and the area around the Eden Valley is a major part of the story. Booth manages to evoke a feeling for the district as the investigation spreads out. Have the Savages become more violent? or have long festering grudges erupted between neighbours?
This seemed a capable but ordinary crime novel around the level of Peter James or Ian Rankin, but slowly the characters grew on me. Ben is planning a wedding, his brother runs a local farm, Carol he knew from school days, and there are several (I assume) recurring characters in the force's E Division - young to retiring - that kept my interest. The Peak District figures strongly and I think Booth does the area proud. The clues are slowly dispersed, but you don't need to work too hard, mostly it will resolve in the end - by which time I was happy to start another in the series.
2011 / Tradeback / 440 pages
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