Dead and Buried: A Cooper & Fry Mystery by Stephen Booth

Moorland fires are burning.  It's an attempt to cover a crime but no one knows that in the beginning.  They begin to figure out the truth when they find jackets, phones, money and identification buried in the dirt.  They don't find the missing people but here's a first clue in what really might have happened to them...

Witness Impulse and Edelweiss gave me the opportunity to read this book for review (thank you).  It has been published, so check with your local bookstore for a copy.

I really enjoy Ben Cooper as a cop.  He's a nice guy with a stick-to-it attitude.  He doesn't always understand people but he works very hard on his cases and is a good cop.  Diane Fry is abrasive, angry, and a bit mean.  She's the one who knows people and she has a quick brain.  She's also always juggling for the "win" to prove she's better than anyone else.  This team snarls at each other as much as they work together, but they do solve cases.

They are working to find the missing persons from two years earlier.  As they work on that, they find a dead body in a deserted pub and a murder investigation begins.  It's complex case with many players.  There are families with secrets.  Cooper and Fry just keep investigating and asking questions and they keep getting closer to an explanation.  They find the bodies of the missing people in a place that had been searched before.  Someone had been hiding them, but who?

I liked everything about this story except the horrific ending.  There's tragedy here that may be impossible to recover from.  Why do that to your characters?  I might be too sensitive but I feel for the characters.  

Read it and let me know how it made you feel.  Maybe I'm just a wimp.