****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
In "Scared to Die," the author's latest--and best--Cooper and Fry mystery, set in the touristy Peak District of England, things get noirishly complicated after a late-middle-aged apparently agoraphobic woman is found murdered in her seemingly secure home while a three members of a family are found burned to death in theirs.Naturally, the cases turn out to be related. Naturally, as usual, DS Fry manages to antagonize quite a few people along the way while DC Cooper pursues clues with diligence and seems to be in the process of getting a life, too.As before, it's clever, well plotted, and just when you think it's going down the road to Cliché-land, it deftly avoids doing so. You'll probably guess that one of the characters who turns up is not quite what he seems, but I doubt if you'll guess who he will turn out to be before all is revealed.There are two sequences that Hitchcock probably would have loved to have filmed: one involves Cooper and another policeman (to reveal who he is would give away elements of the plot) chase after a suicide-bent man via cablecar and then a spiral staircase (I was getting dizzy just reading the passage). Another is a pursuit that happens during a Halloween festival--a festival that's nothing like an American celebration of the holiday.As always, Mr. Booth demonstrates his skill at character development, both Cooper and Fry's and the secondary characters as well (the yuptastic couple that is obsessed with wiping out grey squirrels sticks in my memory, as does the Scottish fire inspector).
