Former journalist Stephen Booth has given up his career in newspapers to write a series of novels set in the heart of Derbyshire.
But why has the Nottinghamshire-based, award-winning author chosen Derbyshire as the setting for his detective series?
The former deputy editor of the Worksop Guardian explains here:

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A missing teenage girl has been found dead near a Peak District village.

A mountain biker has been murdered in bizarre circumstances.

There has been a series of other violent crimes, too – and Derbyshire has suddenly become a much more frightening place to be.

I plead guilty to all these crimes.

The downside is that I have to warn you that the county’s murder rate will continue to rise.

The somewhat better news is that these murders all take place within the pages of my series of crime novels featuring fictional Derbyshire police detectives Ben Cooper and Diane Fry.

One of the main pieces of advice given to aspiring writers is to ‘write about what you know’.

So it wasn’t a difficult decision when I chose Derbyshire as the setting for my novels.

It meant I would be writing about an area I know well, and about the sort of people I have lived among all my life.

And not only that – I also knew that right on my doorstep I had an area which is a source of endless inspiration.

I located Ben Cooper, Diane Fry and their colleagues in the fictional town of Edendale, the headquarters of Derbyshire Constabulary’s ‘E’ division.

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