"The Glass Room" by Ann Cleeves

Vera, a single detective, her parents dead, lives next to Jack and Joanne. Joanne hasn't been taking her meds and disappears. She's found at The Writers House (where residential courses are run). There's a murder of Tony Ferdinand, a guest speaker and influential critic, and Joanne is found holding the knife. She claims she has just picked it up. Then the house's owner Miranda is found dead by Nina, who's on the course. Nina's unread story has some details from the murder. Alex (in his twenties) is Miranda's son. They've been living there 15 years.

Ferdinand (lecturer) and Miranda (librarian) had been at St Ursula's college at the same time. Miranda's novel had flopped until Ferdinand praised it. Then it was televised.

Joe, married to Sal, is worried that he's neglecting the kids when working for Vera. He begins to fancy Nina, a writer. Joanna had tried to blackmail her ex-husband, an MP. Miranda's cat is killed, left in chapel like a sacrifice Nina's room is broken into. Dried apricots are left.

Publisher Chrissie decides to publish a book with pieces by Writers House people, hoping to raise money to keep the place going. The launch is at the house. After the launch finishes, the killer falls into a trap (?) attacking Nina. It's the retired local policeman. After his divorce from Margaret, Mark Winterton, didn't see enough of his daughter Lucy. She wanted to be a writer. At university she'd tried drugs. She had done a course at the Writers House. When Ferdinand was teaching there her work was savagely critiqued. She killed herself. Winterton did literature evening classes. When he heard that Ferdinand would be at the Writers House again, he decided to take revenge. He'd got ideas from Shakespeare's revenge plays.

Joanna wanted a baby and couldn't the treatment, hence the pleading letter to her ex.

Other reviews

• Mushy Cloud (I found it extremely irritating that the character of Vera Stanhope was constantly being described and fleshed out in this book. I suspect it’s because the earlier stories have been made for TV now and this is the first book to be published since the viewing public have been introduced to the stories, so the author is redefining Vera for those people ... I was let down by the ending a little too. It was very clumsy and very clunky and the revelation of the murderer was completely out of the blue. There were no red herrings along the way and there were no clues to his identity)
• rachelreadsbooks (My major issue with the books is the unrelenting fatphobic comments about Vera. Nearly every time she’s mentioned we are told she is fat. We get it! This is book five! It is really at the point where it seems like sloppy writing and unbelievable. ... I did feel like the solution here was one that was difficult to guess since we weren’t told much backstory for some of the characters. )

"The Girls on the Shore" by Ann Cleeves

An audio book - a short story.

Matthew Venn, a Devon detective married to Jonathan, sees from his house 2 public-school girls on the beach. It's a cold, school day. He gets them into his house and calls his colleague, Jen, asking her to come. The younger girl Imogen has bruises. The older girl, Olivia, says their mother left them in the car after receiving a phone call. Their father left a few days earlier. Matthew finds the car abandoned, with half a bottle of vodka. He finds the mother. She hasn't been drinking and suspects the bottle is Olivia's. She explains that Olivia's been a problem for years. It's she who's been bulling Imogen. They return to the Matthew's house. He's prepared to let the family go, but Jen (an ex-battered wife) has done some research and doesn't want it to end there.

It feels unfinished.

"The Darkest Evening" by Ann Cleeves

An audio book.

Lorna, who's been ill, has a baby, Thomas, who's about a year old.

It's been snowing. While driving her landrover in Northumberland, Vera, a detective inspector, finds an abandoned car with a baby in it. She takes the baby, leaving a note. The nearest house happens to belong to a rich relative of Vera's. Vera's not seen them for years, not since her father (the black sheep of the family) died. Juliette's holding a little party there. She and actor Mark have been married 3 years, childless. He wants to convert the rundown stately home into a theatre, and it seeking money. Dorothy, with a Cambridge degree and a toddler, is the housekeeper. She went to school with Juliette. Vera finds that the car is owned by 67 year old Constance Brown (ex-teacher). Her neighbour Lorna, a single mother, sometimes borrows her car.

Joe, a family man, is one of the policemen.

A dead body is found outside - Laura's.

They interview Lorna's mother while the father is out. Pretty Lorna had been bullied at school and got anorexia. She spent time in a clinic. She became pregnant. The mother thinks that her husband loved Lorna deeply, but the police wonder about the father (though they don't interview him?). The mother had seen the baby, but the father hadn't. The couple agree to look after the baby.

Holly, part of the police team, thinks through the suspicions that readers might be harbouring - that a woman might have murdered.

Mark has a womanising reputation. Juliette wants a child. Mark jobshares with Sophie. Mark lies to the police about what he did early one day in Newcastle.

Lorna liked painting. One of her several paintings of a cottage was called "The darkest evening". Josh (a friend of Mark) was in her art group. He and Lorna were friends, non-sexual.

Constance suddenly disappears. Lorna's clinic bills were paid by Juliette's father, Crispin. Lorna's mother said that she had a serious affair with Juliette's father, and Lorna could have been his child. But Juliette says that Crispin died before Lorna became pregnant.

On the day of her death, Lorna phoned various helpers saying that she was slipping back - something to do with Thomas's father.

Juliette knows that her mother knows that her father wanted Lorna to be looked after, though it wasn't in the will.

Vera finds that the cottage is in the estate's woods.

Bloodtests showed that Crispin wasn't Lorna's father.

Thomas is taken. Vera finds him in the cottage. A man with a shotgun takes here away - Josh's father. He confesses that he was Thomas's father, and that he'd planned to start a new life with Lorna. But when Lorna became stronger, less vulnerable, she changed her kind and became friends with Josh. Holly saves Vera. Vera later explains the case to Joe, and promises to stay friends with her rich relatives. Vera sees ways to help solve some people's problems that she'd learnt about during the invesigation.

"A bird in the hand" by Ann Cleeves

An audio book.

Tom French, a twitcher (bird watcher), is found dead (head bashed in by a cylindrical object) on the Norfolk coast by young Adam (another twitcher). Adam's father (a magistrate whose young wife left him when Adam was little) doesn't want fragile Adam involved with investigations, so he asks George Palmer-Jones (a twitcher, but also a retired person with connections) to investigate. His wife Molly helps too. He gets the police report and starts questioning other twitchers. He discovers that Tom used to be friends with Sally, who has a child, Barnaby. She once tried to kill herself. He was also friendly with his female probation officer - Tom was found guilty of possessing grass 2 years before, though he denied it after.

Several people are introduced, each with a reason (though rarely sufficient for murder) and several with alibis (not always 100%). Sometime we have their point-of-view. Adam has a portable bicycle. Sally is getting threatening mail. Cranshaw (a teacher who looks after his old mother) sent a hate letter to parents of kids who Tom tour-guided. Dennis, a strong chef working at the same White Lodge hotel as Tom, might be smoking cannabis. Terry, also working at the hotel, is mentally defective. He saw Tom with a binoculared person on the day of his murder. Rob had failed to get the international tour-guiding job that Tom had been offered just before his death. Adam has a secret. He starts being friends with Tina. Ella runs the Windmill cafe. Vera, newly divorced, chases birds and young men.

Ella held a party to celebrate a TV show about the place. George saves Adam from the well in the windmill ruins (he was probably meeting someone there).

George realises that the threatening letters to Sally were written by Cranshaw. He goes to the Scilly Isles because 3 of the main characters had been there at the same time.

Sally has been lying. In the Scilly Isles she was at a party with Tom. But Pete was in love with her, and she with him. George thinks that Pete is the father. Pete was arrested for a drug offence but Tom gallantly took the blame because he knew Sally loved Pete. Pete won't leave his wife.

Cranshaw's near madness is revealed - he's bitter about not having married and was irritated when Tom belittled his reputation. But Adam was the killer - hearing voices. Why, wondered George, had his father wanted George to conduct the enquiry?

I like it, especially the description of the twitching community - the holidays abroad; the long journeys across the country if a sighting's reported; the abandoned houses where they stay; ringers vs twitchers; the dedicated twitchers vs the tick-and-run types. Some villages cater for twitchers even though they find them strange. In the cafe there's a blackboard savaged from the closed school on which info for twichers is written.

Other reviews

• Sue Magee
• goodreads

"The long call" by Ann Cleeves

An audio book.

It's set in North Devon. Matthew Venn watches his father's funeral from afar. We later learn that his parents belonged to a strict religious cult that disowned him. He's not seen his parents for 20 years. He's an inspector, married to Jonathan who runs a woodyard (a cultural/community centre).

Jenn (single with 2 teenage kids) and Ross work with Matthew.

The Marsdens, a childless couple, the retired man a birdwatcher, found the body.

Morris, an old widower, has a Downs daughter Lucy, 30, who goes to a daycentre at the woodyard.

A stabbed body at the beach turns out to be Simon, divorced, 40. He was volunteering at the woodyard cafe. He lived with Gabby (who is resident artist at the woodyard) and Caroline (Cas, whose mother killed herself, whose father gave money to the woodyard project. She works in a church charity for troubled people). Somehow Simon paid the rent though he'd claimed to be homeless and troubled. Years before he'd killed a child in a car accident. He used to talk to Lucy on the bus.

A Downs syndrome woman, Christine, disappears. The aunt and uncle who look after her belong to the cult. The uncle, Dennis, is a wife-beater. He's on the woodyard board.

There are many suspects. Matthew convincingly keeps an open mind. It's discovered that Simon has £200,000 and was writing a will - to the woodyard? He owned a flat and Gabby had been to the bedroom there. Christine is found. She'd been questioned in the flat then dumped in a wood. Then someone had destructively searched the flat.

Lucy is abducted in the street while her father's back is turned. Matthew interviews Christine's mother, who works in an old people's home. She says that Christine was sexually abused at the woodyard (which is why she no longer goes) and that the committee paid her off, claiming that bad publicity wouldn't help the daycentre users. They said they'd deal with the culprit - Cas's boyfriend, the Rector. She'd kept evidence - stained clothing. But the evidence has recently disappeared from her room (which Lucy has visited).

Lucy is found on the beach, but not before Matthew is knocked unconscious there.

Grace (Dennis's wife) is mentally frail. She says that she met Simon, who made her feel confident. She told him too much, and to save her husband's reputation she killed Simon. The punchline is that the child Simon killed had severe learning disabilities and had months to live.

Themes include -

• Untrustworthy religious people
• Widowers and divorced men trying to atone
• Women with mental illness/incapacity

"He felt tears welling in his eyes" is a sentence I've seen in other books. Maybe I'm over-sensitive to redundancy.

Other reviews

• reading groups for everyone
• goodreads
• Kirkus reviews