Despite the fact that Ann Cleeves has published twenty-five
novels since 1986, this is the first of her books I’ve read, and that’s
probably thanks to the excellent TV series Vera, starring
Brenda Blethyn.
Set in the northeast of England, this book evokes my home
area very well: Foxhunters, Whitley Bay, Seaton Sluice, North Shields, Morpeth
and Newcastle.
Julie Armstrong arrives home after a night out to discover
her young son strangled, laid out in a bath of water and covered with wild
flowers. And all that evening his sister was asleep in the next room. It’s a
tantalising case for Inspector Vera Stanhope, the fat and ungainly and
deceptively gauche copper. Not long after, another body is found, and this time
it’s a young woman in a rock pool, again covered in flowers.
Vera’s ably helped by Joe Ashworth and the rest of her team,
even though ‘she scared the pants off most of them; even those who shouted
their mouths off in the police canteen were too timid to commit themselves to
an opinion which Vera might consider foolish.’ As they investigate the local
bird ringing club and friends of the dead woman, undercurrents of guilt,
incompetence and adultery muddy the waters. The characters are rich and have
depth, the plot is convoluted, but it all seems very real, down-to-earth
without being gratuitous or offensively gritty.
As I read this book, I could hear Blethyn speak Vera’s
words, a tribute to Cleeves and the actress and also the scriptwriters who have
captured the essence of the book. I’ll certainly be reading more books by Ann Cleeves.
To
date, there are only five Vera Stanhope novels - The Crow Trap (1999), Telling Tales (2005), Hidden
Depths (2007), Silent Voices (2011) and The Glass Room
(2012). Cleeves has been busy on another series, The Shetland Island Quartet, Raven
Black (2006) which won the Gold Dagger Award, White Nights (2008), Red
Bones (2009) and Blue Lightning (2010), and these books are being
filmed for TV too, starring Douglas Henshall as Detective Jimmy Perez.
This review was published in a local magazine in November, 2012.
Copyright Nik Morton, 2014
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