2011 contemporary police mystery, fourth in Cleeves' Vera Stanhope
series. Stanhope, reluctantly attending the local gym, finds a woman's
body in the steam room.
Once again everyone has secrets. The second viewpoint is from a
social worker, then woman in charge of the case when a mother drowned
her son, who has fled to a village in the middle of nowhere to try to
get away from the publicity—and the dead woman was her boss at the
time. There's a lot of thrashing around and going down blind alleys,
and meanwhile the survivors try to get on with their lives; but murder
casts a long shadow.
Cleeves effectively makes Stanhope an unpleasant but sympathetic
character: she knows she's a mess, but she's good at what she does,
and if she thinks something other than bluntness is needed, she'll
send in one of her subordinates instead.
I did think there was one obvious extra detail, entirely consistent
with the resolution, which nobody worked out (gung Fvzba Ryvbg unq
npghnyyl xvyyrq uvf yvggyr oebgure, naq gung uvf zbgure xarj vg naq
jnf pbirevat sbe uvz), and I was a little disappointed that even the
possibility wasn't mentioned; but the game of deduction was fairly
played, and I continue to enjoy Cleeves' plotting and characterisation
even as I have to regard the possibility of a genuinely sympathetic
character as increasingly unlikely.
I don't think there's any special reason to start here, but if you've
enjoyed others in this series this offers the same recipe: complex
people, lots of buried secrets, and occasional lyrical descriptions of
the outdoors.