Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
The Heron's Cry by Ann Cleeves Series: Two Rivers #2
Published by Minotaur Books on September 7, 2021
Genres: Mystery
Pages: 384
Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley
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North Devon is enjoying a rare hot summer with tourists flocking to its coastline. Detective Matthew Venn is called out to a rural crime scene at the home of a group of artists. What he finds is an elaborately staged murder--Dr Nigel Yeo has been fatally stabbed with a shard of one of his glassblower daughter's broken vases.
Dr Yeo seems an unlikely murder victim. He's a good man, a public servant, beloved by his daughter. Matthew is unnerved, though, to find that she is a close friend of Jonathan, his husband.
Then another body is found--killed in a similar way. Matthew soon finds himself treading carefully through the lies that fester at the heart of his community and a case that is dangerously close to home.
I was so happy to continue Two Rivers to see the characters and meet new ones. The foundation of the series is the characters in the police department along with their family and friends. The head of the team in Matthew, and his husband, Jonathon runs an art centre. There’s Jem who is a single parent of two teens. There’s Ross who is a favorite of Matthew’s boss, and is bucking to move up, but needs more skills; he thinks he’s better than he is. Vicky does a lot of computer research and camera review work.
I enjoy the British terminology and idiosyncrasies. There is also the attitudes with the fun way they speak. The team is smart and uses good strategies to solve the murders but the pace of murders is too many too fast Of course, not everyone tells the truth. I also enjoy the setting descriptions of the towns, farms and land.
The world and characters are well developed and described. I didn’t guess the culprit even when both Matthew and one of the civilians had figured it out. I don’t really try though. I kind of hoped it was someone else I didn’t like very much. The deaths were such a tragedy for the families.
I appreciated the pace and layers within the story. I definitely want to keep reading this series and this author. Matthew had some growth in his personal life and I want to see how that goes in the future, too.
About Ann Cleeves
Ann grew up in the country, first in Herefordshire, then in North Devon. Her father was a village school teacher. After dropping out of university she took a number of temporary jobs – child care officer, women’s refuge leader, bird observatory cook, auxiliary coastguard – before going back to college and training to be a probation officer.
While she was cooking in the Bird Observatory on Fair Isle, she met her husband Tim, a visiting ornithologist. She was attracted less by the ornithology than the bottle of malt whisky she saw in his rucksack when she showed him his room. Soon after they married, Tim was appointed as warden of Hilbre, a tiny tidal island nature reserve in the Dee Estuary. They were the only residents, there was no mains electricity or water and access to the mainland was at low tide across the shore. If a person’s not heavily into birds – and Ann isn’t – there’s not much to do on Hilbre and that was when she started writing. Her first series of crime novels features the elderly naturalist, George Palmer-Jones. A couple of these books are seriously dreadful.
In 1987 Tim, Ann and their two daughters moved to Northumberland and the north east provides the inspiration for many of her subsequent titles. The girls have both taken up with Geordie lads. In the autumn of 2006, Ann and Tim finally achieved their ambition of moving back to the North East.
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.
I read all types of books but my favorites are urban fantasy and romantic suspense.I like some romance and some action / adventure / mystery in everything.I like sex in my books but please, only between TWO people.Intimate conversation is equally important to the sex in a book.It lets me see the characters.The other thing I enjoy is humor.
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Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
- C21-Summer
I do enjoy a good police procedural/mystery and this sounds like a great series. I’ll have to check it out!
I think it might be even better on audio but I just haven’t read it that way.
I enjoyed the first installment of this new series so I’m glad to hear the second book is good too and especially that the characters are well developed.
I enjoyed it. I’d probably enjoy the audio too with the accents.