Blood on the Tongue

This is the best Stephen Booth I've read, and I've enjoyed them all. The mystery encompasses events during WWII and today, as well as several crimes and deaths today that seem unrelated. Booth skillfully weaves them together, with a theme of forgiving and forgetting (or not). I highly recommend this book.

A newspaper and magazine journalist for over 25 years, Stephen Booth was born in the English Pennine town of Burnley. He was brought up on the coast at Blackpool, where he began his career in journalism by editing his school magazine and wrote his first 'novel' at the age of 13. There is no easy way to commit suicide, but Marie Tennent seems to have gone out of her way to make hers as difficult and uncomfortable as possible. She just seemed to have given up the will to live and curled up in the freezing snow and stayed there until her body was covered in a layer of frost, almost making her blend in with the countryside. Marie's body is not the only one the police have to contend with as a baby is discovered in the wreckage of an old bomber aircraft and the body of a man is dumped by the roadside. All this coming at a time when snow and ice have left half of the Division out of action and Diane fry is forced to partner DC Gavin Murfin. Fry and Ben Cooper were never going to be the dream team but Ben is her soul mate compared to Murfin. This is just the start of another murder from the pen/word processor of the author. This psychological thriller is well written, entertaining and thrilling (well in my experience not all thrillers are). I have read several of the author's books and this is as good as any.

The surprising thing about this author is that he isn't recognized more widely.His writing is absolutely first-class, and his use of theEnglish language surpasses almost any other writing most usencounter. In this narrow field of the "psychological thriller," his command of the language, and his fresh use ofthe metaphor and simile, is unparalleled.A serious reader will have to re-read some of his passages justfor the pleasure of how the mental picture developes as thewords are flowing.In this outing, his "heros," Ben and Diane, remain at personalodds, and they have a difficult time working together on theirrural Derbyshire Constabulary, but a series of crimes bringsthem together again to work their particular magic on violentfelons.A couple of dead bodies are found, apparently unrelated, butinvestigation leads back to a WWII crash of a British bomberin the rural mountains, and an amazing series of crimes beginsto unfold as evidence points to an ever-widening story of crime,deception at multiple levels, and family relationships. Thedetails presented and analyzed will hold the reader's attentionthroughout the book.This author also has an unusual insight into how crime victimsreact to the assaults on them, and some readers will almostshrink from absorbing the details of that process.This story is one that should not be missed by anyone readingin the "crime" or "thriller" field, and we also learn a lotabout life in the rural England of today.Rush to grab this one.

BLOOD ON THE TONGUE is another fantastic novel from Stephen Booth. Not only another fantastic novel, but one with old friends, and even some new ones. Reading BLOOD ON THE TONGUE felt like coming home again.It is in the middle of the coldest part of the year in the Peak District. The time of the year for cold, frozen feet and red, burning ears. When snow flurries blow hard, and the snow banks along the roads grow so high that they hide all kinds of secrets. Perhaps even a dead body, or two. Ben Cooper and Diane Fry find themselves together again, at the Edendale Police Department in the midst of a crime wave. Young men are beating each other, people are being found frozen in the snow, and there is a terrible shortage of help. To make life just that much more unbearable at the moment, Diane has a new nemesis, DC Gavin Murfin. A completely, in Diane's mind anyway, uncivilized brute who drives her nuts with both his disgusting eating habits, as well as just him simply breathing. Everything about Gavin disgusts Diane.To top everything off E Division is getting a new Detective Chief Inspector. Stewart Tailby is retiring to a desk job at headquarters, and DCI Oliver Kessen is taking over. In the middle of this chaos a young woman arrives from Canada in search of information concerning her grandfather, Daniel McTeague. The problem with this is that Pilot Officer McTeague has been missing since his RAF plane went down 57 years earlier in the peat moors around Irontongue Hill. It was reported at the time that Officer McTeague had survived the accident, and had left the wreckage, walking away from his military career and past life, never to be seen, or heard from again. His granddaughter, Alison Morrissey does not believe this, and is insistent that the police open the old case again and investigate.Because of political pressure, the Chief Superintendent agrees to speak to Morrissy concerning her grandfather, but doesn't really have his heart in the whole thing. After all the disappearance was 57 years ago, and all of the evidence surrounding it seems pretty sound.But Ben cannot, and will not let it alone. He has to find out what happened almost 60 years ago.BLOOD ON THE TONGUE, like the previous books by Mr. Booth, is full of atmosphere and personal relationships. He does this in such a way that you actually feel that you are in the story. The way Mr. Booth describes the Peak District landscape, and the people of Edendale draw you into the story. You feel the cold wind against your face, burning your ears, and making it difficult to breath. As you look up at Irontongue Hill you will see it is, "tongue shaped with ridges and furrows. Reptilian, not human, with a curl at the tip. Colder and harder than iron. Darker rock laying on broken teeth of volcano rock debris." And 'you will' see it. All of this you will see and feel, along with people who you cannot forget, their lives entwined and yet separate. Mr. Booth brings both the l

The Edendale, England Police Department copes with all manners of cases quite well until a blizzard strikes, causing the officers to work overtime under rough conditions. Petty criminal Eddie Kemp enters the picture when a neighbor identifies him as one of four white men attacking two immigrants. They have to let him go but will soon discover that he is at the center of a crime wave that leaves the "E" Division requiring a few breaks to solve some high profile cases.A snowplow digs up the body of a man clothed in expensive attire but with no identification. The police alert the media in the hopes they can identify "The Snow Man." When the snow melts, a woman's body is found near the ruins of the Lancaster bomber, The Sugar Uncle Victor, which crashed into Iron Tongue Mountain in 1945. The snowman is identified as a RAF policeman who had been investigating something to do with the crashed airplane. As the police start to link the ties between all these people, dead and alive, they edge closer to uncovering the identities of the criminals.Stephen Booth, author of the best-selling DANCING WITH THE VIRGINS, has written another exciting crime thriller that links present day crimes to an airplane crash that happened at the end of World War II. The protagonists seem realistic and are very personable, which makes it easy to finish the book in one sitting. As much as this will appeal to fans that love a good police procedural, it will also appeal to readers who like a human drama with all its ironies.Harriet Klausner