The Dead Place.

This killing will be a model of perfection. An accomplishment to be proud of. And it could be tonight or maybe next week. But it will be soon. I promise. The anonymous phone calls indicate a disturbed mind with an unnatural passion for death. Cooper and Fry are hoping against hope that the caller is just a harmless crank having some sick fun. But the clues woven through his disturbing messages point to the possibility of an all-too-real crime . . . especially when a woman vanishes from an office parking garage. But it's the mystery surrounding an unidentified female corpse left exposed in the woods for over a year that really has the detectives worried. Whoever she might have been, the dead woman is linked to the mystery caller, whose description of his twisted death rituals matches the bizarre manner in which the body was found. And the mystery only deepens when Cooper obtains a positive I.D. and learns that the dead woman was never reported missing and that she definitely wasn't murdered. As the killer draws them closer into his confidence, Ben and Diane learn everything about his deadly obsessions except what matters most: his identity and the identity of his next victim. . . . From the Hardcover edition. From Publishers Weekly In the sixth circuitously plotted police procedural from British author Booth (after One Last Breath ), Det. Constable Ben Cooper and his boss, Sgt. Diane Fry, pursue a possible serial killer who leaves haunting phone messagesabout impending murders, flesh eaters and decompositionat the Derbyshire police station. Cooper and Fry chase down all sorts of dead ends: a woman who disappears from a local car park, another whose body is found in the woods, and skeletal remains discovered on a hilltop. None of the crimes appears to be the killer's work, but they all may be connected in disjointed ways to a local funeral parlor whose business has dropped off significantly in recent years. Booth's meandering stylelots of subplots and droll diversionsmay not be to everyone's liking. Some readers may also be put off by the lack of chemistry between the earnest and bumbling Cooper and the cranky and aloof Fry. (May) Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Despite a rather substantial flaw--the author makes the identity of the villain a little too clear, way too early in the story--this is a sharp and engaging mystery. Detective Constable Ben Cooper and his partner, Detective Sergeant Diane Fry, the popular series leads, are up against what could be their wiliest adversary yet: a psychopath who has announced that he intends to commit a murder but won't say where or when. Can Cooper and Fry follow the tangled web of clues and stop the madman? One of the many fascinating things about the novel is that Fry, one of the protagonists, comes off in the beginning as immensely unlikable. The novel's tone is grislier than that of some of the earlier entries in the series, too, following the trend of British crime fiction becoming generally more hard-edged and visceral. Booth is slowly building a reputation as one of Britain's best mystery writers, and his latest won't do anything to stop the momentum. David Pitt Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved The messages could be the work of a hoaxer obsessed with death, but when a woman is abducted from a multi-storey car park the mystery caller who taunts the Derbyshire Police with talk of the irresistible scent of death cannot be ignored - particularly when the warnings grow ever more ominous. An Askews Gold 2005 title When Detective Diane Fry listens to the eerily calm and controlled voice of an anonymous caller describing death and decompositions she is certain she's dealing with a killer. DC Ben Cooper, meanwhile, is looking into Derbyshire's first case of bodysnatching Soon there will be a killing. Close your eyes and breathe in the aroma. I can smell it right now, can't you? So powerful, so sweet. So irresistible. It's the scent of death.