Graham Vernon is a man who knows all about secrets, and the police are at a loss to understand the attitude of this powerful businessman and his glamorous wife to the death of their precious daughter. Harry Dickinson found the body, but what instincts make him so bent on obstructing the police investigation into Laura's murder? And what do he and his two fellow retired lead miners find to talk about on those long, balmy nights in the pub, hunched over their game of dominoes? Laura Vernon is smart, sexy and the keeper of many secrets, but now she's lying dead in a thicket in the heart of the country. It's a long, hot summer in the Peak District, but the blue skies are darkened by police helicopters and the sound of birdsong is drowned out by the increasing hysteria of a full-scale search operation for a missing teenage girl. (Oct.Blackdog THE DEBUT NOVEL BY STEPHEN BOOTH The leisurely pace and Dickinson's philosophical conversations with his friends on loyalty, death and television detective shows may disappoint readers of fast moving crime fiction, but Booth's intention here, at which he succeeds admirably, is to unveil secret lives against the seemingly placid background of a country village. Only his brother Matt understands that Cooper may be suffering from the mental ''black dog'' of his mother's schizophrenia. But Cooper, too, is demonstrating increasingly unprofessional behavior, which costs him dearly and deprives Fry of her promotion. Cooper is sickened to learn that Vernon's male and female co-workers and clients of his financial consultancy business were often invited to the Mount for orgiesDand that a few may have included Laura. Vernon's young lover Laura's biker boyfriend and a few business associates of the Vernons'. The list of suspects, including Dickinson and Laura's wealthy father, Graham Vernon, grows to include the Vernons' gardener and Mrs. Personal troublesDCooper's mentally ill mother and memories of his heroic cop father's murder, and Fry's dim recollection of past terrorsDdistract the two from their work, but somehow they patch together a case, sexual tension building between them all the while. Investigating the case is a promising young local detective, Ben Cooper, whose heart is set on a sergeant's post also sought by the Edendale Police Division's icy new up-and-comer, Diane Fry.

Out walking his black Labrador one sweltering August evening, the retired miner finds a running shoe belonging to Laura Vernon, a 15-year-old reported missing from her mansion on the Mount. Dickinson is one of a triad of macabre old men who haunt the woods and countryside near Edendale in northern England's Peak District.

The cryptic activities of eccentric, uncooperative murder suspect Harry Dickinson add depth to this intriguing first-time offering, a psychological suspense story from a British journalist.

Black dog by stephen booth