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Ann is the author of the books behind ITV's VERA, now in it's third series, and the BBC's SHETLAND, which will be aired in December 2012. Ann's DI Vera Stanhope series of books is set in Northumberland and features the well loved detective along with her partner Joe Ashworth. Ann's Shetland series bring us DI Jimmy Perez, investigating in the mysterious, dark, and beautiful Shetland Islands... Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
Tell that to a group of friends who continue to meet on Holy Island off the Northumberland coast. It's become a ritual over fifty years to set the stage of time within increments of gains and losses. The aging tribe meet at Pilgrims' House to light candles, reminisce over their years together at grammar school, and dine and drink heartily into the night. But there's always the unwelcomed visitor of memory over a tragedy that occured there in their midst so long ago. Cleeves excels in character development. There are multiple POVs, including each of the team and some of the suspects. The almost rivalry between Joe and Holly works well and I like that this team isn’t the seamless group that other series have. The ending really caught me off guard.For the National Year of Reading, Ann was made reader-in-residence for three library authorities. It came as a revelation that it was possible to get paid for talking to readers about books! 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. The judging panel consisted of Geoff Bradley (non-voting Chair), Lyn Brown MP (a committee member on the London Libraries service), Frances Gray (an academic who writes about and teaches courses on modern crime fiction), Heather O'Donoghue (academic, linguist, crime fiction reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement, and keen reader of all crime fiction) and Barry Forshaw (reviewer and editor of Crime Time magazine). And leading lady Brenda has already teased what’s to come after that, following filming in Corbridge in December. Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival. Bear with the slow start at the beginning of THE RISING TIDE. Once Vera enters, in Chapter Seven, the story takes off and never lets go. Most of it takes place in a rather unique location—Holy Island—an area regularly cut off from the rest of
Ann Cleeves’s Vera Stanhope is a great character and series and The Rising Tide is now my favorite of her novels. It combines a complex plot with interesting characters who have known each other for 50 years and, naturally have a mixed history to go with that amount of time. Every five years, these former school mates meet for a reunion on Holy Island, a small piece of land that becomes a literal island at high tide. They stay at Pilgrims’ House, an austere setting and former nunnery, the scene of their initial getaway when they were teenagers. Cleeves’ books are strongly character driven, and Holly Island becomes another character in this story. As Vera rarely leaves Northumberland, this is a delightful change of scene. It also sets up a barrier and threat to the investigation. Vera is such a strong, clever character. She is not perfect, occasionally vulnerable, and sometimes has self-doubts. She’s human. School friends first bonded fifty years earlier at a retreat on Holy Island. They were led by a young teacher. They have had a reunion every five years since. On their first reunion, one of the participants, Isobel Hall, died when caught in the rising tide while crossing the causeway. Now, the five who have returned regularly at five-year intervals plan to spend their time with good food and drinks while they reminisce, remembering their youth and good times. The memory of Isobel's death haunts them still. It has been fifty years since they first met, but how well do they know each other? Have they been involved over the years?The engrossing plot delves into the friends' reminiscences, which seem innocuous but possess an underlying menace. Vera—blunt, intelligent, frumpy and obsessive yet deeply affectionate toward her team—continues to prove her investigative mettle. A visit with Vera—whether in the series or via the television adaptation, now in its 11th season—is always welcome."—Oline Cogdill, Shelf Awareness If there is a criticism, it is that there is considerable repetition and too much time spent on the professional competition between Joe and Holly—“She didn’t dislike Joe, but she saw him as competition.” Vera knows exactly how to lead her team to get the best out of each of them, and Cleeves doesn’t do things without having a purpose. Learning the reason for the focus is a game changer. Every five years the group of friends who had been there gets together to remember Isobel and what they all had had. A special group bonded by their shared experiences when they were in last year in high school. There’s a swathe of clues to go through, and false starts, overlayed by the sense of time and Hector’s bits of nonsense bullying Vera from the grave. My first introduction to this author was her Shetland series. I read them all and then watched the series on television. Both were brilliant. I then discovered this series and Vera but my intro was reversed. Watched the series and then read the books. I seem to love pretty much anything this author writes.
The Rising Tide is the tenth book in the Vera Stanhope series by Ann Cleeves. It was the first book by Anne Cleeves I have read. Reading it as a stand-alone did not inhibit my enjoyment. I love Vera, she’s definitely one of my all time favourite detectives ….she’s so unconventional, and unaffected by what others may think of her, but she’s an excellent detective, she’s demanding when it comes to her murder squad team, but they are only too eager give her their best efforts, and please her. I loved this book! I have enjoyed all the Vera books (as I also love the tv series--I hear Brenda Blethyn's voice now when I read the books) but this one is, I think, my favorite. I think I feel that way when I finish all her books but this one is, for me, the best. For fifty years a group of friends have been meeting regularly for reunions on Holy Island, celebrating the school trip where they met, and the friend that they lost to the rising causeway tide five years later. Now, when one of them is found hanged, Vera is called in. Learning that the dead man had recently been fired after misconduct allegations, Vera knows she must discover what the friends are hiding, and whether the events of many years before could have led to murder then, and now . . .The history of this group was interesting and, of course, they all became suspects. There were other suspects as well. There were a lot of avenues to investigate and Vera's team stayed busy following all the leads. I've ready quite of few books in this series and have enjoyed them overall. Vera and her team work well together and each seem to have their own special expertise. I like the characters very much. I was disappointed by how many times the author mentioned that Vera was overweight, though. What's up with this? The ending to this was a real surprise to me. Vera Stanhope. A dumpy woman with an incisive mind, a terrier-like hold on problems, and the habit of chivying her staff to get results, sometimes pitting them against each other, all in the name of solving the case. Who doesn’t love “large and shabby” Vera Stanhope, the blunt detective in Ann Cleeves’s Northumberland police procedurals? She is already one of the genre immortals."— The New York Times A group of elderly (=my age!) people gather every five years in a reunion of a bonding weekend they'd attended while in high school (not, of course, called that--this is in Northumbria). They are in a beautiful but isolated place which becomes an island when (you guessed it!) the tide rises. Then no one can get on or off the island, at least by car which is how these folk arrived.
Northumberland by the rise and fall of tidal waters. A fabulous setting for a murder mystery, with its sudden fogs, and the dangers stemming from its rising tides. THE RISING TIDE is a murder mystery with enough suspect twists to have your head spinning. The story is told from multiple viewpoints, adding to the drama. From Ann Cleeves— New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows—comes the stunning tenth Vera Stanhope audiobook, The Rising Tide , a powerful story about guilt, betrayal, and the longheld secrets people keep. In this, the tenth in Anne Cleeve’s excellent series, Vera find’s herself on the lovely but isolated island of Lindisfarne…..also known as Holy Island, a small community only reached by a causeway, completely cut off from mainland Northumberland at high tide.The setting of this whodunnit is hugely atmospheric, cold, misty, wild and ancient….I loved it….I know the island well, and many of the other locations, so, for me, this really adds another layer of pleasure to this favourite series. So it’s a nice, complex murder mystery, but it is Vera that draws the reader in, Vera who holds the reader’s attention. Admittedly, someone who hadn’t read several of the earlier Vera books would miss many of the references to her past, wouldn’t fully understand her tenacity, her reasoning, how life with Hector, her father, warped her mind. Hector was always there, bullying her from the grave. The author is skilled at hinting at something coming without ever using actual portents. Nor does she resort to prologues which is such a relief. For those who both read the books and watch the television series, it must be said that it’s a pleasure to still have Joe Ashworth as Vera’s second in the books—“her surrogate son, and her conscience. … Her boy. Her favourite. Sometime, she supposed, she’d have to release him and send him out into the world beyond her sphere of influence, but not yet. She’d miss him too much.” In this standalone that includes characters Joe and Holly, murder suspects drop their defenses before Colombo-like detective Vera Stanhope, a character who understands natives and criminals better than most—and who seems to carry a deep empathy for them all.
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