The day they found the body on the shore, Matthew Venn was already haunted by thoughts of death and dying. He stood outside the North Devon Crematorium on the outskirts of Barnstaple, a bed of purple crocus spread like a pool at his feet, and he watched from a distance as the hearse carried his father to the chapel of rest. When the small group of mourners went inside, he moved closer. Nobody questioned his right to be there. He looked like a respectable man, a wearer of suits and sober ties, prematurely grey-haired and staid. Not a risk-taker or a rule breaker. Matthew thought he could have been the celebrant, arriving a little late for the service. Or a diffident mourner, sheepish and apologetic, with his soft skin and sad eyes. A stranger seeing him for the first time would expect sympathy and comfortable words. In reality, Matthew was angry, but he'd learned long ago how to hide his emotions...***
In North Devon, where the rivers Taw and Torridge converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his father's funeral takes place. The day Matthew turned his back on the strict evangelical community in which he grew up, he lost his family too.
Now he's back, not just to mourn his father at a distance, but to take charge of his first major case in the Two Rivers region; a complex place not quite as idyllic as tourists suppose.
A body has been found on the beach near to Matthew's new home: a man with the tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death.
Finding the killer is Venn’s only focus, and his team’s investigation will take him straight back into the community he left behind, and the deadly secrets that lurk there.
***
I enjoyed this book very much, and I am thrilled to have found a whole new series to read by the talented Ann Cleeves.
The main character, Detective Matthew Venn, is a super addition to the detective book genre. He is an intelligent, complex and stoic man. His family disapprove of his sexuality and he has been spurned by the community in which he grew up. His backstory is revealed throughout the book and it all makes for a fantastic main character.
Equally, the secondary characters are well portrayed and are easy to either understand or identify with. I particularly liked Jen and Lucy, who in their own individual way are strong female characters.
The book was well paced and moved along in an appropriate manner for a book of this genre. There were several threads running throughout that gradually unravelled over the course of its entirety.
I borrowed this book from the library and have already ordered the next in the series, The Heron's Cry, and I am really looking forward to reading it. I am also thrilled to learn that it has been made into a television series and I will definitely be watching that in due course.
I highly recommend this book and readers who enjoy a good detective story will enjoy this book.
ISBN: 978 1509889600
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Formats: e-book, audio, hardback and paperback
No. of Pages: 400 (paperback)
Purchase Link - Bookshop.org*
About the Author:
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. 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.
In 1987 Tim, Ann and their two daughters moved to Northumberland and the north east provides the inspiration for many of her subsequent titles. 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. 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.
In February 2016, Ann was delighted to be appointed as a National Libraries Day ambassador for 2016. She found time in her busy schedule because, she said: "Libraries matter. If we believe in equality of opportunity we must fight not just for the buildings but for the range of books inside and the skilled staff who can promote reading in all its forms. Not only do libraries encourage us to be more tolerant and better informed, they contribute enormously to the wealth of the nation." In the same year, she was the first recipient of Iceland Noir's Honorary Award for Services to the Art of Crime Fiction.
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 series. In addition, she has been short listed for a CWA Dagger Awards - once for her short story The Plater, and twice for the Dagger in the Library award, which is awarded not for an individual book but for an author's entire body of work.
On 26 October 2017, Ann was presented with the Diamond Dagger of the Crime Writers' Association, the highest honour in British crime writing, at the CWA's Dagger Awards ceremony in London.
She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Sunderland in 2014, in recognition of her outstanding achievements as a crime writer. In December 2018, this was followed by an honorary award of Doctor of Letters (Hon DLitt) from Robert Gordon University (RGU) in recognition of her contribution to the world of literature and crime writing. She was awarded a further honorary degree by the University of Liverpool in October 2022.
In December 2017, Ann's husband Tim died suddenly in hospital, after being admitted for a heart condition.
Ann's books have been translated into twenty 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 2007. It has been adapted for radio in Germany - and in the UK where it was a Radio Times pick of the day when it was first broadcast Radio adaptations of Raven Black and White Nights have both been repeated. Twelve series of Vera, the ITV adaptation starring Brenda Blethyn, have been shown in the UK and worldwide: series twelve ended on an amazing fiftieth eposode, based on Ann's novel The Darkest Evening; there have also been seven series of Shetland, based on the characters and settings of her Shetland novels, and an eighth is in preparation. A television adaptation of The Long Call, the first in Ann's new series set in North Devon, was also broadcast in October 2021.
In the autumn of 2016, Ann celebrated the publication of 30 novels in 30 years. Her latest book is The Rising Tide, her tenth Vera Stanhope book.
On Sunday 17th February 2019, Ann was the castaway on BBC Radio 4's iconic Desert Island Discs. The programmre remains available to listen online, or download.
She was awarded an OBE in the 2022 New Year Honours List, "for services to Reading and Libraries."
(all opinions are my own)
*Disclosure: I only recommend books I would buy myself and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post contains an affiliate link from which I may earn a small commission.
