A girl goes missing in the peak district, and the police are out in force to find her. It's an old guy walking his dog who discovers the body, but he's a bit of a prickly character and not especially cooperative with the police. Ben Cooper is a detective whose father was a well-liked copper in the area, and is joined by Diane Fry, recently transferred from Birmingham.

Both Ben and Diane have problems in their backgrounds though: in Ben's case it's a mother with some kind of mental illness; in Diane's, it's.... well, I don't know, because I gave up after listing to 4 CDs of this audiobook, which took me about 4 weeks. This was just creakingly slow, and not really very gripping at all.

I don't think it was helped by the fact that the reader, Christopher Kay, was, I think the same guy who read Author, Author, but while he was excellent for that, he's not at all appropriate for a crime novel: much too civilised.

Won't bother with any more by this author.

Gave up : 28-Jun-2008 (audiobook)