The Nature of Things

"My little horse must think it queer    To stop without a farmhouse near    Between the woods and frozen lake    The darkest evening of the year..."   - Excerpt from Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost The evenings are dark and sometimes stormy in Ann Cleeves' latest entry in her DI Vera Stanhope series. And snowy. Very, very snowy. On the first snowy evening of winter, in blizzard conditions, Vera starts driving home in her ancient Range Rover. She is on a familiar road, but in practically zero visibility, she becomes disoriented and takes a wrong turn. She comes upon an abandoned car pulled off the road with the door standing open and stops to investigate. There is no driver around, but she deduces from the position of the seat that the driver was a short woman. Then a cry from the back seat leads her to discover a toddler strapped into his car seat. Finding no one around, she takes the child and continues on the...

After plowing through several consecutive books with heavy themes, I decided it was time for something a bit lighter. I settled on a tale about a triple murder as told by Ann Cleeves. This is the eighth and latest book in the D.I. Vera Stanhope series and it is a very good one. And, of course, the tale isn't primarily about three murders; it's about Vera and her A-team of Joe, Holly, and Charlie, and how they work together to solve puzzles. This is a particularly complicated puzzle because two of the aforementioned murders had occurred back in the 80s, the remains only recently discovered. They were discovered because Vera was selected for a public relations stint.  She was assigned by her boss to make a presentation to convicts at a local prison about how crime affects the victims. She went, grudgingly, to give her spiel and in the audience was a former copper named John Brace. John Brace was a bent copper who had finally received his comeuppance in relation to a scheme in whi...

During my recent struggles with health issues, I took comfort in returning to some of my guilty reading pleasures. One of the chief among these is the Vera Stanhope mystery series by Ann Cleeves. I've been working my way through this series and this is the seventh entry. So far I've found every book to be tightly plotted with well-drawn characters and plenty of social commentary and philosophical observations on human nature to go along with the puzzle of the mystery.  And they are puzzles. I can never guess who the perpetrator is and that held true in The Moth Catcher as well. Cleeves had a previous career as a probation officer and it seems obvious that that experience has informed her understanding of the UK criminal justice system and those philosophical observations on human nature that I mentioned. Here, she gives us the tale of two very different human beings who are brought together by their interest in moths. One is a recent college graduate, a young ecologist who has...

I'm finishing up my reading year of 2019 by visiting some of the series that I've been following. This was the year that I started reading the Ann Cleeves Vera Stanhope Mysteries and I've now reached the sixth in the series, published in 2014. The quality of the writing, plotting, and character development continue to be exceptional for a mystery series. Each book is different and does not follow any particular formula. I am always surprised by the identity of the perpetrator and that was true with Harbour Street , as well. That's true even though I watched and enjoyed the BBC series based on the books. The action in this book takes place around Christmastime and begins with Vera's sergeant, Joe Ashworth, and his young daughter, Jessie, traveling on the Metro after a trip into town. The train is extremely crowded and loud with holiday shoppers and revelers. When the train is stopped due to bad weather ahead and all the passengers exit to be picked up by buses, Jessi...

Continuing with my reading of the DI Vera Stanhope Mysteries, I've reached the fifth entry in the series. This one begins with Vera returning home from work to find her "hippy-dippy" neighbor, Jack, waiting for her in her parlor. He is distressed because his wife, Joanna, has disappeared. Even though she left him a note saying that she needed a break and would be gone for a few days, she didn't say where she was going and he hasn't heard from her since she left a few days ago. He wants Vera to find her.  Well, that proves easy enough. Vera contacts the taxi driver who picked her up and learns that she went to Writer's House, a country retreat where aspiring writers go to attend lectures and workshops and polish their stories. Vera goes to the Writer's House to check on Joanna and let her know that Jack is worried. As luck would have it, her arrival at the retreat coincides with the finding of a dead body in the glass room. The body is that of Professor Ton...

Another excellent Vera Stanhope Mystery. This is the fourth in the series and they just keep getting better. The overweight and out-of-shape Vera who likes her drink maybe just a little too much has recently had her annual physical and the "child doctor" told her she needed to make some lifestyle changes. That couldn't have been much of a surprise, but what kind of changes can Vera tolerate? She tried yoga but found that her mind wandered and she couldn't concentrate on the downward-facing-dog. She settled on swimming. It was something that she sort of enjoyed and she could fit it in before work every day. Or as often as she chose. She joined a local health club at an out-of-the-way hotel where she wouldn't run into any colleagues and committed to doing ten laps - well, more nearly eight - in their pool each day. Then, a few minutes in their steam room and a latte and she was good to go. But then one morning she found another woman seated in the steam room. When s...

I am working my way through the Vera Stanhope series by Ann Cleeves and what a pleasure it has been! Cleeves has created a strong, credible, relatable female protagonist in DI Vera Stanhope and her technical proficiency in creating an excellent balance of puzzle, character, and setting keeps our interest alive as she methodically builds her story. Moreover, the unlikely murders in this particular entry are plausible because they are grounded in recognizable small communities. The relationships in those communities create lots of tension and plenty of red herrings. Misdirection and creating red herrings is another area in which Cleeves excels. This story takes place during a hot summer in the Northumberland coastal area. It begins with Julie Armstrong, a single mother of two teenagers, having a night out on the town with friends. She arrives home very late to find her troubled son, Luke, dead. He has been strangled and laid out in a bathtub filled with water, covered in flowers. She rus...

Telling Tales is the second Vera Stanhope mystery by Ann Cleeves and it is every bit as wonderful as the first. Once again we are introduced to strong and believable characters and the indomitable investigator who is able to ferret out their deepest, darkest, most closely held secrets in the pursuit of her quarry. In this instance, Inspector Stanhope is sent to Yorkshire to re-investigate a case that went badly awry. Ten years before, a fifteen-year-old girl, Abigail Mantel, had been strangled and her body left in a ditch there. The local police led by Inspector Caroline Fletcher had quickly settled on Abigail's father's lover, Jeanie Long, as the likely murderer. After all, Jeanie and Abigail had had a fractious relationship after Jeanie moved into the household and Abigail had only recently convinced her father, Keith, to toss Jeanie out. Moreover, Jeanie had been unable to provide a witness to prove that she had gone to London as she claimed on the day of the murder. She wa...

I have long enjoyed the BBC television adaptation of Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope mysteries as well as the other television series based on her books, Shetland . The actor who plays Vera, Brenda Blethyn, is absolutely perfect in the role, as is the man who plays her sergeant, Joe. Now that I've finally gotten around to reading the first book in the Vera series, I imagined those two actors speaking their lines as I read them. It certainly enhanced my enjoyment of the book. Not that my enjoyment especially needed enhancing. I thought the book was wonderful in its plotting and in the characters that were introduced along the way. I can't think of a single thing that I would change about it. All of the main characters in the story are women. We first meet Bella Furness, a middle-aged wife caring for her invalid husband. She walks out of her house one day and is next seen by Rachael Lambert who arrives in the area to lead an environmental study. When Rachael arrives at the cottage...