Ann Cleeves is the author over thirty crime novels, including the Shetland books and the Vera Stanhope books which have been made into TV series. Her latest book is The Raging Storm, the third book in the Two Rivers series. This is only the second Ann Cleeves book that I’ve read, but I am now confident that if I need distraction and an easy read, this author will deliver.
Ann Cleeves’ books are all anchored in place. The characters in the Shetland series are shaped by the rugged and isolated landscape. I read that the author planned the first Shetland book, Raven Black, as a standalone book because it would stretch credibility to have more than one murder in a place as small as Shetland. There are only 23,000 people in all of the islands. But readers loved the Shetland background, and this resulted in 8 books in this series.
We find the same mix of community and landscape in the Two Rivers books. They are set in North Devon where the two rivers Taw and Torridge meet. In book one, The Long Call, Detective Inspector Matthew Venn returns to this area where he grew up. He left after he became estranged from his family because they’re deeply religious and he is not, a tension that returns with every book. The Raging Storm is set Greystone, a small, bleak (fictional) coastal town in the district where the locals know each other, and the arrival of a celebrity, Jem Rosco, creates some excitement. When during a raging storm, Rosco’s body is found in a dingy anchored off Scully Cove, Venn and his sergeants arrive to investigate.
Ann Cleeves’ books fall into the category of ‘cosy crime’. There is no such thing as cosy crime of course. Murder is murder. The difference is that the violence in these stories usually happen off-stage. The Raging Storm is a gripping mystery. But you don’t want to skip to the end, because the characters and the environment that shaped them are fascinating and you want to spend some time with them before you close the book.
Wilma