Fall Down Dead

Fall Down Dead is the latest addition to Stephen Booth's excellent Cooper & Fry series and it is a brilliant book.

Ben Cooper is facing a locked room murder mystery on top of a mountain as him and his team try to work out who killed one of a group of Ramblers and why whilst Diane Fry is facing an internal investigation.

The author manages to keep both these main threads going without confusing the reader and keeps you hooked throughout whilst allowing you the breathing space to try and work out whodunnit.

Stephen Booth's writing is atmospheric as he uses the Peak District to his advantage and it was a pleasure to read this book

A must read

A party of 13 go for a walk on Kinder Scout, but only 12 make it off the mountain alive.

Ben Cooper doesn't like the look of Faith Matthew's fall to her death.

Meanwhile in York, Diane Fry is hauled in by Professional Standards.....

This is the 18th instalment in the Cooper & Fry series. Always intriguing and never predictable, a genuine page-turner from first to last. Another triumph for Stephen Booth

I would like to thank Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for an advance copy of Fall Down Dead, the eighteenth novel to feature DI Ben Cooper and DS Diane Fry, set in the Peak District.

When a group of walkers get lost on Kinder Scout in the mist rescuers find one of their number dead at the bottom of a spot known as Dead Woman's Drop. Was Faith Matthews pushed or did she lose her footing? The postmortem is inconclusive so Ben keeps investigating while can because once murder is established he has to hand the case over to EMSOU where Diane Fry works. He tries to get hold of Diane but she's uncontactable because she's being investigated by Professional Standards.

I thoroughly enjoyed Fall Down Dead which has a dual plotline and a good mystery at its heart. The plotlines run run concurrently through the novel with the perspective switching between them regularly, even within chapters. Normally I would find this distracting and annoying but both are so compulsive in their own way that I found myself eating up the pages to get an update on each one.

Ben's investigation is by far the most atmospheric with the bleak, treacherous landscape of Kinder Scout looming large. I could feel the cold and damp and what surprised me most was the lack of fear in the walkers because Mr Booth describes a terrifying scenario, lost in the fog, or does that just say something about my own mentality? Whatever, it's a great piece of writing. With no forensics the rest of his investigation focuses on the walkers, their relationships and history and the inconsistencies in their statements. A steady stream of reveals and discoveries make it engrossing reading.

Diane's encounter with Professional Standards is much more ambiguous. The reader gets a rough idea of what they investigating but no detail and only one example. Again, it is quite unsettling because with no concrete allegations Diane is left to muse over her past and wonder what is going to come back to bite her. There is a strong sense of Big Brother as they know things they shouldn't so she is left to contemplate their source and betrayal. Her feeling of helplessness and the menace of authority are palpable. Even the resolution is shrouded in mystery and while some readers may find it farfetched I have no problem in finding it either believable or probable. It makes for fascinating reading.

I have dipped in and out of this series over the years but even familiarity with it never brings me any closer to understanding the complex relationship between Ben and Diane. Mostly they don't seem to like each other but there is a co-dependency there. Diane turns to Ben when she's in trouble and he doesn't hesitate to help. Much of this is down to their personalities. Ben is easygoing to a point, Diane is spiky, difficult to like and a loner. It's a fascinating dynamic as it's so unusual.

Fall Down Dead is a good read which I have no hesitation in recommending.