Top Hard

Author’s note:

All the titles in my Cooper & Fry series are set in Derbyshire, and I’m often asked by readers why I’ve never written a novel set in my home county of Nottinghamshire. The answer is — I have! About a year before I created my two young Derbyshire police detectives, Ben Cooper and Diane Fry, I wrote TOP HARD. This book reflects the situation existing in Nottinghamshire coalfield villages in the 1990s, and the characters give voice to some of the views being expressed at the time. In 1998, TOP HARD was shortlisted for the first ever New Writing Award, presented by the UK Crime Writers’ Association (now known as the Debut Dagger). A short story adapted from the first chapter appeared in the ‘Criminal Tendencies’ anthology, a fund raiser for breast cancer research, and was later chosen for publication in ‘The Mammoth Book of British British Crime 8’, released in 2011. TOP HARD has never been published in its full-length novel form, until now. I hope you enjoy it!