I've had this book in Mt TBR for quite a while now, quietly hoarding it, having picked it up at an MWF a couple of years ago when Stephen Booth was one of the guests. Reading it now for a discussion on the online list Murder & Mayhem.
"Soon there will be a killing. It might happen in the next few hours We could synchronize watches and count down the minutes. What a chance to record the ticking away of a life, to follow it through to that last, perfect moment, when existence becomes nothing, when the spirit parts with the physical."
I can't read the whole opening without remembering Stephen standing on the stage at MWF reading it - in that lovely quiet lilting British accent - it was the most quietly sinister thing I can remember hearing for a long long time.
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.
The anonymous caller who taunts the Derbyshire Police with talk of an imminent killing could be just another hoaxer. The macabre descriptions of death and decomposition could be someone's sick fantasy. But after listening to the voice, so eerily calm and controlled as it invites the police to meet the 'flesh eater', Detective Diane Fry is certain she's dealing with a killer... And it may already be too late to save the next victim.
DC Ben Cooper, meanwhile, is looking into Derbyshire's first case of body snatching. It is an investigation that will take him into the world of those whose lives revolve around the dead and their disposal, from funeral directors to crematorium staff and a professor whose specialty is the study of death.