A spine-chilling crime thriller from the bestselling, award-winning author of The Dead Place. “Few will be able to predict Booth’s twisted conclusion.” —Publishers Weekly

How do you investigate the murder of a woman without a life? That is the challenge facing Cooper and Fry when a reclusive agoraphobic is found shot to death in her home. With no friends, no family, and virtually no contact with the outside world, the dead woman may simply have been the unlucky victim of a random homicide.

At virtually the same time, a raging house fire claims the lives of a young mother and two of her children. But as the debris is cleared, troubling questions remain in the ashes—among them, how did the blaze start, where was the husband at two a.m. the night of the fire, and was it really the flames that killed his family?

Now, as Cooper faces the reemergence of a dark secret he’d hoped to forget, and Fry copes with problems both personal and professional, a horrific possibility begins to take shape: What if the two investigations are somehow connected? A mysterious and unpredictable killer is on the loose. And his next victims could very well be the only two cops who can stop him.

Praise for the Cooper & Fry Series

“Suspenseful and supremely engaging. Booth does a wonderful job.” —Los Angeles Times

“Booth has firmly joined the elite of Britain’s top mystery writers.” —Florida Sun-Sentinel

“Booth is a modern master of rural noir.” —The Guardian

“Crime fiction for the thinking man or woman, and damnably hard to put down.” —January Magazine

© 2023 William Morrow Paperbacks (Ebook): 9780062302083

Release date

Ebook: August 18, 2023