Stephen
Booth
A
newspaper and magazine journalist for over 25 years, Stephen Booth was born in
the English Pennine mill town of Burnley. He was brought up on the coast at
Blackpool, where he began his career in journalism by editing his school
magazine. He wrote his first novel at the age of 12.
After
graduating from Birmingham Polytechnic (now the
University of Central England), Stephen moved to Manchester to train as a
teacher, but escaped from the profession after a terrifying spell as a trainee
teacher in a big city comprehensive
school.
Starting
work on his first newspaper in Cheshire in 1974, Stephen was a specialist rugby
union reporter, as well as working night shifts as a sub-editor on the Daily
Express and The Guardian. This was followed by periods with local newspapers in
Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. He was at various times Production
Editor of the Farming Guardian
magazine, Regional Secretary of the British Guild of Editors, and one of
the UK's first qualified assessors for the National Vocational
Qualification in Production Journalism.
Freelance
work began with rugby reports for national
newspapers and local radio stations. Stephen had articles and photographs
published in magazines ranging from Scottish Memories and Countrylovers
Magazine to Cat World and
Canal and Riverboat, and a short
story broadcast on BBC radio. In July 1999, his writing career changed direction
when he won the £5,000 Lichfield Prize for his mystery novel The
Only Dead Thing (as yet unpublished).
While
living on a smallholding in Yorkshire, Stephen began breeding pedigree dairy
goats. He later served on the British Goat Society's governing body and judged at shows all over Britain. He has
been chairman of
several clubs, including the charity fund-raising Just Kidding Goat Society, and
probably his most unusual role was as a director of an artificial insemination company. Specialist publications he's been responsible for
include a book on
one of the country's oldest goat breeds, The Toggenburg. He's the current President of the Toggenburg Breeders
Society.
Other
interests include walking, photography, and local history.
Stephen's
first published novel, Black Dog, marked the arrival in print of his best
known creations
- two young
Derbyshire police detectives, DC Ben Cooper and DS Diane Fry.
Black Dog was the named by the London Evening Standard as one of the six best crime novels of 2000 - the only book on their
list written by a British author. In the USA, it won the Barry Award for
Best British Crime Novel and was nominated for an Anthony Award for Best First
Mystery. The second Cooper & Fry novel, Dancing with the Virgins, was
shortlisted for the UK's top crime
writing award, the Gold Dagger, and went on to win Stephen a Barry
Award for the second year running.
In
2003, Detective Constable Ben Cooper was a finalist for the Sherlock Award for the Best Detective
created by a British author, thanks to his exploits in the third book of the
series, Blood on the Tongue. The publication of Blind to the Bones
that year
resulted
in
Stephen winning the
Crime
Writers'
Association's
'Dagger in the Library' Award, presented to the author whose books have given
readers most pleasure. The same book was nominated for the Theakston's
UK
Crime
Novel of the Year award in 2005. Subsequent titles
have
been
One Last Breath,
a
finalist
for
the
UK
Crime
Novel
of
the
Year
in
2006,
The Dead Place
and
Scared to Live.
The
eighth
Cooper
&
Fry
novel,
Dying
to
Sin,
is
due
to
be
published
in
the
UK
in
September
2007.
All the
books are set in England's beautiful and atmospheric Peak District.
At
the
end
of
2006,
the
Peak
District
National
Park
Authority
featured
locations
from
the
Cooper
&
Fry
series
in
their
new
Peak
Experience
visitors'
guides,
recognising
the
interest
in
the
area
inspired
by
the
books.
In addition to publication in the USA,
Canada,
Australia
and
New
Zealand, translation rights in the series have been sold in twelve
languages - French, German, Dutch, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish,
Portuguese, Russian, Czech, Romanian and Japanese.
Stephen
gave up journalism in 2001 to write crime novels full time. He and
his wife Lesley live in a former Georgian dower house in the county of Nottinghamshire,
England (home of Robin Hood and the Pilgrim Fathers). They have three
goats and three cats.
March
2007
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR
GENERAL
RIGHTS
ENQUIRIES,
email
Teresa
Chris
at
the
Teresa
Chris
Literary
Agency,
43
Musard
Road,
London
W6
8NR.
or
phone:
0207
386
0633
(from
outside
the
UK:
+44
207
386
0633)
FOR
TV
&
FILM
RIGHTS,
email
Charlotte
Knight
at
the
Rod
Hall
Agency,
6th
Floor,
Fairgate
House,
78
New
Oxford
Street,
London
WC1A
1HB.
or
phone:
0207
079
7987
(from
outside
the
UK:
+
44
207
079
7987)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Find out more about the
Derbyshire Peak District
Visit
HarperCollins Publishers (UK)
Back to Stephen Booth Home
Page
