Telling Tales (Vera Stanhope, 2)

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With each person's story revisited, the Inspector begins to suspect that some deadly secrets are threatening to unfurl. Despite looking on DS Joe Ashworth as an honorary son, she is not blind to his sentimentality and how easily he is fed a sob story. This second book I’m the series hooked me as the first one did not, and left me more than impressed with Cleves.

I had previously read the Shetland Quartet (one further one was added recently) and had hoped this series would be as good, and it is. The MacMillan audio edition of Telling Tales, read by Julia Franklin, was shortlisted for an 'Audie' Award for best Mystery. The setting perfectly captures the essence of the book, a 15 year old girl murdered in a village of lies and deceit.Emma's husband and brother are both harboring secrets, though Emma's brother Chris has an obsession with Abigail and can't seem to move on from her murder. The detectives soon found the culprit, and Jeanie Long was sent to prison for the dastardly deed, who by all accounts was having a passionate affair with the father of the victim. Ann's DI Vera Stanhope series of books is set in Northumberland and features the well loved detective along with her partner Joe Ashworth. She lives in a fantasy world and has daydreams of having an affair, but stands by her husband even if she finds him less exciting. I just love this crime/thriller story featuring Inspector Vera Stanhope (one of my favourite police characters EVER).

There are secrets in the village of Elvet that Vera and Joe continually must dig into and even then, almost get onto the wrong path of the killer. Telling Tales is the second book in Ann Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope series – which is now a major ITV detective drama starring Brenda Blethyn as Vera . The killer is still at large, and Vera Stanhope must reopen the investigation and jog villagers’ painful memories.Within six-months of moving to Elvet, Emma’s life was blighted by the discovery of her friends body, strangled to death. As there were a couple of characters in each of those categories I sometimes lost track of which crotchety, naive hooligan was speaking.

Cleeves’ novels never fail to engage, marked out by subtle characterisation and a cunning that sees her extruding hidden passions, historic resentments and simmering frustrations. 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. Now Inspector Vera Stanhope is making fresh enquiries amongst the residents of Elvet, the small East Yorkshire village where Emma and Abigail grew up. She said: "I have never won anything before in my life, so it was a complete shock - but lovely of course.I note that the publisher tries a couple of other narrators, and eventually settles on a possible winner around book four. I had watched the show that is based on this book [not all the shows are based on the books] and I could not, for the life of me, remember WHO the killer was. Whether detailing the domestic world, life with a small baby or the work of the pilots on the ships, Cleeves has an accomplished eye.

This second novel is another opportunity to devour Ann Cleeves unique brand of atmospheric crime fiction, marked out by her portrayals of village life against the rugged backdrop of the windswept and rugged Northumbria coastline. DI Stanhope may be confident and very proud but crucially she also recognises her own fallibility, and berates herself for missing the obvious (although it is never quite so obvious to her readers as to Vera). 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. Keith Mantel's young girlfriend, Jeanie Long, had moved into his home and Abigail vowed to get her out. There was more information about her in this book than the first, but I haven’t been “grabbed” by this character yet.Much of the book is spent getting the reader comfortable with all the players, but I still had to stop every now and then to keep them straight in my head. I found very few of the characters likeable, and even appreciated how one unreliable narrator was modeled after Emma Bovary (of Madame Bovary notoriety). Soon after they married, Tim was appointed as warden of Hilbre, a tiny tidal island nature reserve in the Dee Estuary.