About the Author
Ann Cleeves is the author of over thirty critically acclaimed novels and is translated into as many languages. She is the creator of popular detectives Vera Stanhope and Jimmy Perez who can be found on television in ITV’s Vera and BBC One’s Shetland. The TV series and the books they are based on have become international sensations, capturing the minds of millions worldwide. Sunday Times number 1 bestseller, THE LONG CALL, was the first in Ann’s Two Rivers series set in Devon, and is now in production for an ITV drama.
Ann moved to North Devon when she was 11 years old. Before then the family lived in a tiny village, and as the headmaster’s daughter she always felt like the outsider at school. But in Barnstaple, Ann found a real home. She made life-long friends and fell in love with the beautiful North Devon coast, which still has a very special place in her heart. She worked as a probation officer, librarian, bird observatory cook and auxiliary coastguard before she embarked on her career as an author.
Ann’s been awarded the highest accolade in crime writing, the 2017 CWA Diamond Dagger, and is a member of ‘Murder Squad’, working with other British northern writers to promote crime fiction. A passionate champion for libraries, she was a national libraries Day Ambassador in 2016. Her new ‘Reading Coaches’ project, providing support for health and wellbeing in communities, launches in the North East this summer. Ann lives in North Tyneside near where the Vera books are set. Find her on twitter @AnnCleeves, Visit anncleeves.com
About the book
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.
His daughter Eve is a glassblower, and the murder weapon is a shard of one of her 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. It’s not long since Matthew’s returned to North Devon with Jonathan, after 20 years estranged from his deeply religious family, now he finds himself treading carefully through the lies that fester at the heart of his community and a case that is dangerously close to home . . .
Review
One of Venn's team inadvertently becomes drawn into a case, due to being as drunk as a skunk and unable to provide assistance to a man who a short time late turns up dead. What did Dr Yeo want to tell her, what could he possibly have known that was worth being killed for.
A connection is created between Venn and the crimes - the burden of guilt. How it is processed, how it serves to enrage and feed negative emotions, and the scars it can leave behind. Also trying to navigate crime, whilst creating a balancing act between professionalism and friendship.
The Two Rivers series is approached in a slightly different way to the Shetland and Vera series in a sense that Cleeves straps a motor on the back of each character and lets them drive and herd the crime element of the read. The aforementioned other series are crime driven with strong leads. It perhaps lacks the usual writing finesse of previous novels, but I think that's probably because of the attention given to the more diverse characters in this series.
I can't wait to see this in TV format, and can only hope the author has a hand in casting. It's a slow burner of a series, but well worth it. Cleeves always delivers an excellent crime read.
Buy The Heron's Cry at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher Pan Macmillan: Published 2nd September 2021, priced £20.00 H/B. Buy at Amazon com.
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