Giveaway, Guest Post, Partners In Crime Tours, Showcase

DEAD IN THE DARK by Stephen Booth (Guest Post, Showcase, & Giveaway)

October 9, 2018 1 Comment

Dead in the Dark

by Stephen Booth

on Tour September 25 – October 25, 2018

Synopsis:

Dead in the Dark by Stephen Booth

How do you prove a murder without a body?

Ten years ago, Reece Bower was accused of killing his wife, a crime he always denied. Extensive police searches near his home in Bakewell found no trace of Annette Bower’s remains, and the case against him collapsed.

But now memories of the original investigation have been resurrected for Detective Inspector Ben Cooper – because Reece Bower himself has disappeared, and his new wife wants answers.

Cooper can’t call on the Major Crime Unit and DS Diane Fry for help unless he can prove a murder took place – impossible without a body. As his search moves into the caves and abandoned mines in the isolated depths of Lathkilldale, the question is: who would want revenge for the death of Annette Bower?

Book Details:

Genre: Mystery
Published by: Witness Impulse
Publication Date: September 25, 2018
Number of Pages: 384
ISBN: 0062876104 (ISBN13: 9780062876102)
Series: Cooper & Frye Mysteries #17
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Guest Post by Stephen Booth

10 things that readers don’t know about Detective Inspector Ben Cooper

Ben Cooper’s birthday is in late June, so his star sign is Cancer (like mine!).
He broke his arm as a child when his older brother Matt pushed him off his bike. He still gets a twinge of pain in the winter.
Like many children who grew up on a farm, Ben once had pet lamb that had lost its mother. He called it Norman.
As a teenager, his first girlfriend’s name was Stephanie. She was the daughter of a local veterinary surgeon, but she dumped him when he announced he was joining the police.
Ben barely scraped good enough grades at school to qualify as a police cadet – unlike his colleague Diane Fry, who is a university graduate in Crime and Policing.
However, after his day-to-day experience as a cadet and a police constable, he passed his sergeant’s exams with flying colours.
Ben played rugby for a while, as a wing threequarter with Edendale rugby club, but a bad tackle during a match against Buxton aggravated his old injury.
As a uniformed police constable, he was once called to an incident of domestic violence and had to single-handedly tackle a man armed with a knife, for which he received a Chief Constable’s commendation.
On his desk in his office, Ben Cooper has an aerial view of Bank End Farm, where he grew up.
He doesn’t have much time for reading because of his job, but when he does he enjoys historical fiction like Bernard Cornwell or Simon Scarrow. He rarely reads crime novels, because he finds them too unrealistic.

Stephen Booth

Author Bio:

A former newspaper journalist, British author Stephen Booth is the creator of two young Derbyshire police detectives, Ben Cooper and Diane Fry, who have appeared in 17 crime novels, all set in and around England’s Peak District.

Catch Up With Stephen Booth On:
stephen-booth.com
Goodreads
Twitter
Facebook

Read an excerpt:

Chapter One

No one wants to die in the dark. To lie alone in the blackness, feeling the chill of death creep slowly over you. Shut away from the light as the fear numbs your limbs and chokes the breath in your throat. The long, long sinking into the cold depths. And then to sense that slipping away. The final slipping away into nothing.

Do you feel that stab of pain as it shoots through your chest? Try to make your breathing more shallow. You have several broken ribs, a fractured arm, perhaps a punctured lung. You can hardly know, in the dark. But you can feel the internal bleeding, the seeping blood as it squeezes your internal organs, bloats your stomach and intestines. You know your injuries are fatal.

That fear of the dark is overwhelming. Because this is true darkness, an eternal night in which your eyes have become useless. Your heart thumps uselessly as you strain to see where you’re lying. You can sense space around you, a slight movement of icy air, a shifting of heavy masses, a solid weight way above your head. A sharp, stabbing pain is in your back from something hard you’re lying on. This isn’t a grave. But it is your tomb.

Does your fear of the dark make any sense? When you’re dead, you go into endless blackness. Yet you’ve always hoped you would get one last glimpse of the light, always prayed that you wouldn’t die alone.

Well, that’s not going to happen. There’s nothing for you to see here. Not a glimmer of light, not a flicker of hope. Only the darkness.

A creak and a rattling makes you freeze. Is someone here? Or some thing? But no . . . you breathe out and release the pain. The noise has quite a different meaning. It’s something huge shifting overhead. It signals the end, the approach of your death. You’re about to be crushed completely.

***