
DI Vera Stanhope is not one to make friends easily, but her hippy neighbors keep her well-supplied in homebrew and conversation, and somehow bonds have formed. When one of them goes missing, Vera tracks the young woman down to the Writers House, a country retreat where aspiring authors work on their stories. Things get complicated when a body is discovered, and Vera's neighbor is found with a knife in her hand. Calling in the team, Vera knows that she should hand the case over. She's too close to the main suspect. But the investigation is too tempting, and shes never been one to follow the rules. Somewhere there is a killer who has taken murder off the page and is making it real.
Publisher:
New York : Minotaur Books, a Thomas Dunne Book, 2018
Edition:
First U.S. edition
Copyright Date:
©2012
ISBN:
9781250107367
1250107369
9781250135728
1250135729
1250107369
9781250135728
1250135729
Characteristics:
373 pages : 23 cm


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Add a CommentThis is a murder mystery that I can recommend to readers. Cleves has the genre down pat: a troupe of like minded individuals drawn together by a series of literary workshops. And then there is a murder. And then there is another. And then V era Stanhope arrives on the scene to solve the murders. Suspense. False, misleading clues. And then finally the crimes are solved. Anne Cleves does Agatha Christie. Well.
Best book I have read in years!
One of the weaker Ann Cleeves books. I may however have been swayed by watching a couple of episodes of "Vera" so maybe while reading this my image of the detective and other characters was changed by the tv show. Regardless, I just didn't find the setting of this novel very intriguing. Kind of a classic "Clue" novel, with all the suspects in one location, which is kind of neat but I just didn't care about the suspects nor the whole writer's house aspect of the book. The last Vera Stanhope book was better (as was the Shetland series). Still, I enjoy this authors writing and it is still fun to try and figure out who did it.