View source for The Murder Road (Cooper and Fry) by Stephen Booth

{{infobox1
|title=The Murder Road (Cooper and Fry)
|sort=Murder Road (Cooper and Fry)
|author=Stephen Booth
|reviewer=Sue Magee
|genre=Crime
|summary=There are few advantages to coming in at book 15 in a long-running series but it does prove that the book works perfectly well as a standalone. It's a good read with plenty of twists.
|rating=4
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=496
|publisher=Sphere
|date=May 2016
|isbn=978-0751559972
|website=http://www.stephen-booth.com/
|video=Sq6HaHYziVY
|cover=0751559970
|aznuk=0751559970
|aznus=0751559970
}}

The locals will tell you that there's only one road into and out of Shawhead and over the years they've become accustomed to being cut off by snow or floods.  The road passes under a railway line and one day in early February Mac Kelsey's curtain-sider jammed under the bridge.  It was Amanda Hibbert who discovered the obstruction as she tried to return home to Shawhead, but there was no driver in the cab.  There ''was'' a lot of blood though.

At first it looked as though they were searching for a driver who'd left his cab in need of help, but there were only a few places he could go to and no sign of him there.  DI Ben Cooper and his team were conscious that there was some urgency about their search as time would be running out for the injured man.  But the more they looked the more they realised that there was a lot more to the inhabitants of Shawhead than first met the eye: the hamlet is a web of secrets, hidden loyalties and lies.

It took me a while to come to terms with who was who in the police team - that's one of the disadvantages of coming in at book 15 in a long-running series, but on the other hand, I survived and it goes to prove that the book works perfectly well as a standalone.  Fortunately I didn't realise that the series was about Cooper ''and Fry'' until I'd finished reading - or I might have been disappointed: DS Diane Fry has only a very small part to play in the story.  More intriguing is the appearance of DS Devdan Sharma, who seems to have a bit of history behind him, not least the reason why he's been posted to a rural area when there are inner-city areas crying out for officers with an Asian background.

The story seemed a little slow to get going - even allowing for my lack of familiarity with the cast, but I still read the book remarkably quickly and I'm looking forward to the next book in the series.  The plotting and writing is good enough for me to be considering looking at Stephen Booth's back catalogue - and that's not something which I do very often.

I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.

For more Midlands-based crime, although this time it's rather more urban, have a look at [[Cold in Hand by John Harvey]].

[[Stephen Booth's Cooper and Fry Books in Chronological Order]]

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