Scared to live

A dark night, an open bedroom window - and three bullets that strike from the darkness. The victim of the shocking assassination is a harmless middle-aged woman, living a reclusive life in a quiet Peak District village. But is she quite so harmless as she seems?Detective Sergeant Diane Fry knows that innocence is no defence against death. She's already combing through the blackened wreckage of a family's life, sifting the tragic possessions of a young mother and two children who lost their lives in a suspicious house fire. Like Rose Shepherd, the Mullens never saw the danger on the night they died.For DS Fry and her colleague DC Ben Cooper, these are just the first pieces in a complex pattern of destruction, the latest deaths in a long trail of killings. To find the answers they need, Cooper and Fry must take their enquiries far beyond Derbyshire, to the other side of Europe and back.Along the way, Cooper is forced to face up to his own ambivalent feelings about mental illness, and an unexpected complication turns up in Fry's life - a surprise in the shape of a charismatic Bulgarian police officer, who awakens ambitions she didn't know she had, and feelings she'd long since buried.Cooper and Fry are about to step into dangerous and unfamiliar territory, where the criminals they seek could be far away, and yet their influence very close to hand. Death can be everywhere, even lurking among the crowds in the tourist village of Matlock Bath. Soon they might discover some of the reasons people can be scared to live.Yet even when they appear to have the answers, the connection at the heart of this enquiry could turn out to be the most surprising revelation of all…SCARED TO LIVE is the 7th novel in the multiple award-winning Cooper & Fry series, set in England's beautiful and atmospheric Peak District.* A Sunday Times bestseller in the UKPRAISE FOR THE COOPER AND FRY SERIES:"Suspenseful and supremely engaging. Booth does a wonderful job." - Los Angeles Times"Simultaneously classic, contemporary and haunting." - Otto Penzler, Mysterious Bookshop, New York"Booth has firmly joined the elite of Britain's top mystery writers." - Florida Sun-Sentinel"Crime fiction for the thinking man or woman, and damnably hard to put down." - January Magazine"Highly recommended - a great series!" - Seattle Mystery Bookstore"Ben Cooper and Diane Fry are the most interesting crime team to arrive on the mystery scene in a long while." - Rocky Mountain News"One of our best story tellers." - Sunday Telegraph"There are few, if any, contemporary writers who do this as well as Stephen Booth." - Arena magazine"Booth delivers some of the best crime fiction in the UK." - Manchester Evening News"If you read only one new crime writer this year, he's your man." - Yorkshire Post