The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope)

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Cleeves crafts a subtle, complex mystery, and the curmudgeonly Vera and her distinctive view of the world make this series stand out in a crowded genre."

The Glass Room By Ann Cleeves | Used | 9780330512701 - Wob The Glass Room By Ann Cleeves | Used | 9780330512701 - Wob

It had been a mistake to get to know these people. Let folk into your life and they started making demands. She hated people making demands. The Glass Room is the fifth book in Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series - now the major ITV detective drama Vera, starring Brenda Blethyn. A prison outreach leads to a meeting between Vera Stanhope and John Brace, a now-incarcerated corrupt former police superintendent, in Diamond Dagger Award–winner Cleeves’s engrossing eighth mystery Continue reading »

Summary

The ground shifts in more ways than one for Det. Insp. Jimmy Perez in CWA Diamond Dagger–winner Cleeves’s moody seventh Shetland mystery (after 2016’s Thin Air). At the funeral of old Magnus Continue reading » DI Vera Stanhope is not one to make friends easily, but her hippy neighbours keep her well-supplied in homebrew and conversation. But when one of them goes missing, her path leads her to more than a missing friend . . . From CWA Diamond Dagger Award winner Ann Cleeves comes The Glass Room, the fifth book in the Vera Stanhope series, published for the first time in the US. A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read. Northumbrian Det. Insp. Vera Stanhope makes her winning U.S. debut in this mildly chaotic police procedural, the fourth entry in a series that’s the basis for Vera, a British TV crime show now Continue reading »

The Glass Room by Ann Cleeves - Euro Crime Review - The Glass Room by Ann Cleeves - Euro Crime

Clarts? Free Dictionary says, “ dialect Scot and Northern English lumps of mud, esp on shoes.” The setting of the Vera Stanhope stories—Northumberland, England’s northernmost county—lends itself to regional dialect. Note also Vera’s unsparing description of herself: “great fat Cupid in wellies” is one of her milder self-portraits. Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.Faint feelings of guilt notwithstanding, Vera takes some personal time for her solo investigation. “She felt the wonderful liberation of a truant,” as she takes in views of the bay and steep valleys. The setting of the Vera Stanhope novels in the “windswept coastal villages and rolling moors of Northumberland” is another hook for dedicated readers. Vera, present in a personal capacity, calls in the local police and her colleagues from CID. Those present at Writer's House at the time of the murder are rounded up and all but a handful eliminated from the enquiry for logistical reasons. The remaining suspects or witnesses include Miranda, the owner of the house and business; her son Alex; a retired policeman now hoping to be a published author; a young man who has discovered a writing talent while in prison; an elderly famous crime writer who is teaching on the course; and another teacher, Nina, an academic and aspiring writer. By the process of elimination, one of these people, or Joanna, must have committed the crime – though there is the outside chance that a random stranger could have gained access. THE GLASS ROOM is a traditional, Agatha Christie-style book, relying on gradual unearthing of untold relationships and past actions among a small group, rather than on modern technology or details of police procedure. There are a couple of early clues that the police don't follow up, but once the detectives gather momentum it is clear that Vera is getting to grips with all the complexities and will work it out eventually – without recourse to the "messages" the criminal is leaving, which in the end turn out to have gone over everyone's heads (will readers spot the references, I wonder?). DI Vera Stanhope is not one to make friends easily, but her hippy neighbours keep her well-supplied in homebrew and conversation, so she has more tolerance for them than most. When one of them goes missing she feels duty-bound to find out what happened. But her path leads her to more than a missing friend ...