A stunning debut novel from a major new talent, Black Dog is a dark psychological thriller, steeped in atmosphere and tension.

It's a long, hot summer in the Peak District, but the blue skies are darkened by police helicopters and the sound of birdsong is drowned out by the increasing hysteria of a full-scale search operation for a missing teenage girl. Laura Vernon is smart, sexy and the keeper of many secrets, but now she's lying dead in a thicket in the heart of the country.
Harry Dickinson found the body, but what makes him so bent on obstructing the police investigation into Laura's murder! Graham Vernon is a man who knows all about secrets and the police are at a loss to understand the attitude of this powerful businessman to the death of his only child. He's holding something back. But what could be more important than finding Laura's killer?

A brooding, psychological thriller, the sequel to Stephen Booth's stunning debut Black Dog: 'An exceedingly good first novel: wholly engrossing, it has well-drawn characters and a real sense of place: T. J. Binyon, Evening Standard

The vast labyrinth of caverns, passages and subterranean rivers beneath the Peak District are a major tourist attraction. But this summer not all the darkness is underground, and not all the devils are folk legends. Mingling with the holidaymakers is a convicted killer, bent on revenge. Fourteen years ago Mansell Quinn was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his lover. Now he's out under licence, whereabouts unknown, and his ex-wife has been murdered. As they try to anticipate the fugitive's next move, detectives Diane Fry and Ben Cooper become increasingly puzzled by the case. Why did Quinn's two friends refuse to back up his alibi? And why did nobody visit him in prison for the last ten years of his sentence? Nobody, that is, except one of those two friends: ex-soldier Will Thorpe, now living rough somewhere in the Hope Valley. Overstretched and unable to apprehend a killer who moves around the area with impunity, the police can do little but warn other potential victims to be on their guard. And as the son of Sergeant Joe Cooper, the officer respon

Ben Fry and Diane Cooper return in another psychological Peak District thriller from the acclaimed author of "Blind to the Bones" and "The Dead Place". It was an ordinary house fire with tragic consequences: a wife and two children dead. But then for DC Fry and DS Cooper the ordinary always meant trouble. Trouble like a grieving husband behaving as though his life is in danger. Trouble like a shocking assassination - of an old woman living alone in a quiet Peak District village. Her death suggests that even the most harmless people have cause to expect the unexpected. But Fry and Cooper are certainly surprised to find a link between the two incidents, one that will take them halfway across Europe and back again in their search for the truth. Along the way, they discover some of the reasons why people can be scared to live - and the connection at the heart of the enquiry that proves to be the most surprising revelation of all!