2014 contemporary police mystery, sixth in Cleeves' Vera Stanhope
series. A few days before Christmas, an old woman is stabbed on the Tyne
and Wear Metro. She was on her way home to the former fishing
town of Mardle, and the more the police look into it, the more old
secrets come to light…
I want mysteries to be hard but fair. If I don't solve one—as I
didn't this—I want to feel that I was fairly misled, not as in this
case that I didn't have the information I needed. Of course this is
very much a personal reaction; I mention it not to warn off the
potential reader but to explain the state of mind in which I write the
review and how I feel about the book.
Which is, frankly, very positive. While the people are important, the
decaying port town becomes a character in itself; why do people come
here, why do they stay, and how does it affect them? There are no
great pauses for the author to have a rant, just an observation here
and there, and the people we meet during the course of the case.
There's the widow with two children keeping a small hotel, the priest
who seems just a bit off (but in different ways as different
detectives talk with him), the man who runs the dying boatyard, the
manager or the temporary refuge for women…
While the series has always been about the police as professionals
first, and continues to be, there's some personal connection too:
Sergeant Joe Ashworth was travelling with his daughter on the train
when the stabbing happened, and he's already under domestic stress
because of his eternally-demanding boss.
I'm just mildly niggled because I didn't feel I was given the tools to
have a chance at the case -- nor that the police would have enough
evidence at the point of solution to make a prosecution stick.
(This is my 2,000th book review post. Gosh.)