Book #51 Harbour Street

Harbour Street by Ann Cleeves
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It appears that I am destined to read the Vera Stanhope series in reverse order. I started with #7 The Moth Catcher (see my earlier review) and have just completed #6 Harbour Street. I came to this series in the wake of reading all of Ann Cleeves’ Shetland series.

This is, like Shetland, a classy and classic whodunit series, centred around the middle-aged, overweight DI Vera Stanhope, made famous by Brenda Blethyn in ITV’s Vera.

Vera is married to the job and still clings to memories of her long deceased father Hector, still driving around in his battered Landrover, enjoys sharing a drink with her hippy neighbours and still mentors her protégé DS - Joe Ashworth. And it is with him that this terrific read starts as Joe and his daughter Jessie are returning home on the Newcastle Metro after a carol service and are swept along with the jostling crowd. But when bad weather halts the train and the other passengers fade into the swirling snow, Jessie notices that an old lady in the corner hasn’t moved. Seventy-year-old Margaret Krukowski is dead, fatally stabbed as she sat on the crowded train. Nobody saw the stabbing take place and her killing appears to be motiveless so why would anyone want to harm a reserved and elegant old lady?....

No more of the plot save to say that Vera is relieved to have an excuse to escape the holiday festivities, which will take the team to the Northumberland town of Mardle to begin their enquiries - in Harbour Street.

Cleeves is an excellent crime writer. Harbour Street is full of good, old-fashioned detective work and the result is a perfectly crafted murder mystery.

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The Moth Catcher

The Moth Catcher by Ann Cleeves
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I consider myself an enthusiastic fan of Ann Cleeves and have read all books in her Shetland series, all excellent books. The Moth Catcher is number 7 in the DI Vera Stanhope series; perhaps an odd place to start as I have read none of the others but enjoyed the series on television and am therefore familiar with her team of DS Joe Ashworth and DC Holly Lawson (for some reason ITV promoted Vera to a DCI).

As I should have expected, The Moth Catcher is a fine read. Vera and her team have to be on top form to figure out what is behind the murders of two apparently unconnected men in a secluded Northumbrian valley. This is a slow burner with meticulous attention to plot detail and characterisation. The details of the victims, the lives they led and their character are painstakingly built up by information gathering and questioning by Vera and her team. It is brilliantly done. The only link appears to be a shared interest in entomology and, in particular, the study of moths. The investigation really holds your imagination as the team close in and yet, for all the information it is not clear who is in the frame. Well, it certainly wasn’t to me!

Vera is a real character, a single-minded DI, who finds herself only really alive and motivated by a murder case. Vera is rather large, she is unfit, and she is middle aged and ought to be spending time behind a desk and thinking of retirement. But, instead she prefers to get results by being out in the field and still gets a buzz from the detail of investigation. Joe the DS, is a family man with young children trying to juggle family with the commitment required of him by his boss and Holly the DC, is a bright young woman wondering if the police force is really what she wants from life.

The Moth Catcher is a masterclass in how to write a police procedural and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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