Burnley crime writer's popularity with library users is no mystery

The latest figures for library loans are revealed in the Public Lending Right statistics issued by the British Library for the period up to June 2017.

They show crime writer Stephen Booth to be the 82nd most borrowed author of adult fiction in the country with a whopping 158,000 loans.

At a local level, he's even more popular. Stephen's novel 'Secrets of Death' was the 30th most borrowed title in North-West libraries, alongside big-name American thriller writers like Lee Child, James Patterson and John Grisham.

Stephen is the creator of two young Derbyshire police detectives, Det. Insp. Ben Cooper and Det. Sgt Diane Fry, who have appeared in seventeen best-selling crime thrillers set in and around the Peak District. His latest title is 'Dead in the Dark', and the 18th book in the series, 'Fall Down Dead', is due for publication in August.

Stephen was born in Burnley and grew up in Blackpool, where he attended Arnold School. He was a newspaper journalist for more than 25 years, including training at Harris College, Preston, and a spell working as a reporter in Wilmslow, Cheshire, while he lived in Manchester. He left journalism in 2001 to write crime novels full-time after the success of his first book, 'Black Dog'.

Since then, he's won awards on both sides of the Atlantic, and his books have been translated into 16 languages, including Russian and Japanese.

In 2003 he was presented with the Dagger in the Library Award by the Crime Writers' Association for "the author whose books have given readers most pleasure".