Ann Cleeves--New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows--returns with the extraordinary follow-up to The Long Call, in the Two Rivers series, soon to be a major TV series too.
North Devon is enjoying a rare hot summer with tourists flocking to its coastline. Detective Matthew Venn is called out to a rural crime scene at the home of a group of artists. What he finds is an elaborately staged murder--Dr Nigel Yeo has been fatally stabbed with a shard of one of his glassblower daughter's broken vases.
Dr Yeo seems an unlikely murder victim. He's a good man, a public servant, beloved by his daughter. Matthew is unnerved, though, to find that she is a close friend of Jonathan, his husband.
Then another body is found--killed in a similar way. Matthew soon finds himself treading carefully through the lies that fester at the heart of his community and a case that is dangerously close to home.
DI Matthew Venn returns in The Heron's Cry, in Ann Cleeves powerful next novel, proving once again that she is a master of her craft.
Ann is the author of the books behind ITV's VERA, now in it's third series, and the BBC's SHETLAND, which will be aired in December 2012. Ann's DI Vera Stanhope series of books is set in Northumberland and features the well loved detective along with her partner Joe Ashworth. Ann's Shetland series bring us DI Jimmy Perez, investigating in the mysterious, dark, and beautiful Shetland Islands...
Ann grew up in the country, first in Herefordshire, then in North Devon. Her father was a village school teacher. After dropping out of university she took a number of temporary jobs - child care officer, women's refuge leader, bird observatory cook, auxiliary coastguard - before going back to college and training to be a probation officer.
While she was cooking in the Bird Observatory on Fair Isle, she met her husband Tim, a visiting ornithologist. She was attracted less by the ornithology than the bottle of malt whisky she saw in his rucksack when she showed him his room. Soon after they married, Tim was appointed as warden of Hilbre, a tiny tidal island nature reserve in the Dee Estuary. They were the only residents, there was no mains electricity or water and access to the mainland was at low tide across the shore. If a person's not heavily into birds - and Ann isn't - there's not much to do on Hilbre and that was when she started writing. Her first series of crime novels features the elderly naturalist, George Palmer-Jones. A couple of these books are seriously dreadful.
In 1987 Tim, Ann and their two daughters moved to Northumberland and the north east provides the inspiration for many of her subsequent titles. The girls have both taken up with Geordie lads. In the autumn of 2006, Ann and Tim finally achieved their ambition of moving back to the North East.
For the National Year of Reading, Ann was made reader-in-residence for three library authorities. It came as a revelation that it was possible to get paid for talking to readers about books! She went on to set up reading groups in prisons as part of the Inside Books project, became Cheltenham Literature Festival's first reader-in-residence and still enjoys working with libraries.
Ann Cleeves on stage at the Duncan Lawrie Dagger awards ceremony
Ann's short film for Border TV, Catching Birds, won a Royal Television Society Award. She has twice been short listed for a CWA Dagger Award - once for her short story The Plater, and the following year for the Dagger in the Library award.
In 2006 Ann Cleeves was the first winner of the prestigious Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award of the Crime Writers' Association for Raven Black, the first volume of her Shetland Quartet. The Duncan Lawrie Dagger replaces the CWA's Gold Dagger award, and the winner receives £20,000, making it the world's largest award for crime fiction.
Ann's success was announced at the 2006 Dagger Awards ceremony at the Waldorf Hilton, in London's Aldwych, on Thursday 29 June 2006. She said: "I have never won anything before in my life, so it was a complete shock - but lovely of course.. The evening was relatively relaxing because I'd lost my voice and knew that even if the unexpected happened there was physically no way I could utter a word. So I wouldn't have to give a speech. My editor was deputed to do it!"
The judging panel consisted of Geoff Bradley (non-voting Chair), Lyn Brown MP (a committee member on the London Libraries service), Frances Gray (an academic who writes about and teaches courses on modern crime fiction), Heather O'Donoghue (academic, linguist, crime fiction reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement, and keen reader of all crime fiction) and Barry Forshaw (reviewer and editor of Crime Time magazine).
Ann's books have been translated into sixteen languages. She's a bestseller in Scandinavia and Germany. Her novels sell widely and to critical acclaim in the United States. Raven Black was shortlisted for the Martin Beck award for best translated crime novel in Sweden in 2000.
My Thoughts
I am a fan of Vera and Shetland yet I have not read any of Ann Cleeves' novels, until now. The Heron's Cry is the followup to The Long Call, the Two Rivers series, with Detective Matthew Venn who is tasked with solving the death of Dr. Nigel Yeo. The murder was elaborately staged with the murder weapon being a shard of glass. The glass was from a vase that his daughter, Eve, who is a glassblower had made.
Detective Venn's co-workers DS Jen Rafferty and DC Ross May are pivotal to the solving of the case. Just when you think that you know who did it, another body turns up. The man, Wesley Curnow, also lives at the place where Dr.Yeo's daughter lives and works. He was also stabbed with a glass shard from a work of Eve's.
Dr.Yeo was a director at North Devon Patients Together organization, he was investigating the suicide death of a young man. Could he have gotten too far in his investigation and known why the young man, Alexander 'Mack' Mackenzie supposedly killed himself? As the clues lead the detectives in one direction, more clues come up that send them off in another direction.
Lots of characters and suspects in this story, Eve Yeo, and Jen who spent some time the night before Dr.Yeo was murdered. He had wanted to talk in-depth with Jen but didn't really say what he wanted to talk about. Ross who has some issues of his own at home and Detective Venn, his husband, artsy Jonathan. Then there is Frank Ley, who owns the complex for the artists, a rich philanthropist. On the land is also a farm that John and Sarah and their children live on and run.
There is a Suicide Club that encourages troubled people to commit suicide. Venn and his team must also investigate how this club has to do with his suicide of Mack. How does all this become involved with the murders of Dr.Yeo and Wes?
This second in the series is well written, not a fast read but well worth it. Like I said a lot of characters to keep track of and their motives. North Devon is a small community where everyone knows everyone else but they keep to themselves. So it is a difficult thing to try to solve a series of murders, which Detective Venn and his team have to do and do it fast before there are more deaths.
I do intend to read more by Ann Cleeves, I love how the British tell a murder story! I highly recommend reading this series and anything else you can get your hands on by this author.
I give it 5 stars.
I received a copy for review purposes only.
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