Blood on the Tongue

In this “outstanding” thriller with “a complex and absorbing plot,” rival detectives investigate murder by digging into the past of their rural community (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

It’s a new year for Peak District detectives Ben Cooper and Diane Fry, and that means new murders to solve in the icy depths of a bitter winter in Edendale, Derbyshire.

It isn’t the easiest way to commit suicide, but the dead woman seems to have simply curled up in the freezing snow and lain there until her heart stopped. There was no one to observe her death but the foxes and the hares. Yet she is riddled with bruises. Cooper and Fry are put on the case but they have as much questions about the abuse the woman might have suffered in life as they do the circumstances of her death.

The unidentified body of a dead man is found by the roadside. And an intriguing young woman arrives in Edendale desperate to solve a decades old puzzle that has haunted her family: a Royal Air Force bomber crashed into Edendale, in the same spot where the frozen corpse was found, killing everybody on board except for the pilot, who supposedly walked away from the wreck and was never seen again. With colds and flus and holiday plans thinning out the ranks of the Edendale police force, Cooper and Fry are scrambling to find an explanation for the two recent deaths while being pulled deeper into the mysteries of the past.

“The best to date of this ambitious series. The plotting is solid, the local color vivid, and the thorny romance fun to follow.” —Kirkus Reviews