Blind to the Bones

Informationen zum Autor Stephen Booth is a two-time winner of the Barry Award for Best British Crime Novel. He is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Black Dog and Dancing with the Virgins . Other bestsellers in his Cooper and Fry series include Blood on the Tongue, One Last Breath , and Blind to the Bones , which earned him the prestigious Dagger in the Library Award. A former journalist, Stephen Booth lives in Nottinghamshire, England. Klappentext The villagers of Withens are dying. Emma Renshaw vanished two years ago, her body never found. Now her former housemate has been bludgeoned, his remains discovered near a deserted railway tunnel. Is there a link between the two? While Detective Sergeant Diane Fry focuses on Emma's possible murder, her colleague Ben Cooper investigates a series of burglaries. Only one family seems exempt: the Oxleys. Descended from workmen who built the ancient tunnels beneath the village, they stick close to their own-and keep their secrets closer. Caught in the tangle of death and deception are Cooper and Fry. Their personal history and professional relationship have blurred before, and will again, as their cases converge in the most unsettling ways. . . . Chapter One Friday As soon as he opened the door, he could hear the screaming. It ripped through the damp air and shrieked in the yews. It echoed from the gravestones and died against the walls. It was like the sound of an animal, dying in pain. Yet this sound was human. With every breath he took, Derek Alton seemed to draw the noise into his own lungs with the air, until something like an answering scream came from deep inside him. The asthmatic wheeze of his inflamed air passages was so high-pitched that his ears couldn't locate its direction, but identified it as a noise that came from the air around him. The pain in his upper chest told him where that noise came from. And Alton knew where the screaming came from, too. With shaking fingers, he brushed some of the dust from his sleeve. He rubbed at a fresh scratch on his knuckles, but managed only to smear a streak of blood across the back of his hand. He could taste dust in his mouth, too—old dust, the debris of years, stirred into the air by a random act of violence. The screaming reminded Alton of the shriek of agony he had once heard from a rat, when a terrier had flushed it from its nest in a barn and its back had been broken under a farmer's spade. The dying rat had squealed with its last strength, as its legs kicked and its pale claws clutched and uncoiled in the dry earth. Now he waited, expecting to hear other noises. At first, there was only the stirring of the breeze in the yews and the drip of rainwater from the ivy on the church walls. But gradually he began to distinguish something else—a rhythmic thudding. It reverberated inside a room some distance away, well beyond the first houses on the road into Withens. It was like a ritual drumbeat, folding over on itself and creating multiple layers of sound. He shivered as he recognized the undertones of menace, which spoke of imminent death. Then there was a burst of laughter somewhere in the village, followed by the slam of a door. A female voice shouted something that Alton couldn't make out. It was just one sentence, half a dozen words, and then the voice was gone. Farther away, an ewe called to its lambs on the slopes of Withens Moor, where the hefted flocks still roamed their territories on the heather and peat bog. Alton had seen Withens Moor. He had seen Black Hill and Hey Moss, too. And he knew the moors themselves were dying. Death had been on Derek Alton's mind all day. He had awoken with a jolt in the early hours of the morning, panicking that he might have disturbed Caroline with one of his bad dreams. But as soon as he opened his eyes, he realized that his mind had been ...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Stephen Booth
• Editore: Bantam Books USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 27.06.2006
• EAN: 9780440242901
• ISBN: 978-0-440-24290-1
• Pagine: 581
• Dimensioni: 102 mm x 178 mm x 32 mm
• Categoria: Narrativa > Gialli > Polizieschi, thriller, spionaggio