4 Stars

I read Telling Tales because I am a fan of Shetland, the BBC television show based on the novels of Ann Cleeves.

If you love crime writing—and I do, then you’ll enjoy Cleves’ Vera Stanhope series. Vera Stanhope is a sharp-witted Inspector on the Northumbria police who relishes in eavesdropping, enjoys drinking, suffers from eczema, wears shapeless dresses and sandals—and evinces occasional flashes of bitterness over her lack of a man. She thrives in the hills of northern England but develops claustrophobia in the flatlands surrounding the prosperous village of Elvet, where she is sent to investigate a long-solved murder case.

Jeanie Long, convicted ten years earlier for the murder of 15-year-old Abigail Mantel, has hung herself in the Spinney Fen women’s prison, after alienating even the other prisoners with her constant protestations of innocence. Vera’s assignment is to determine if police ineptitude resulted in Jeanie’s wrongful conviction and subsequent suicide.

Within days of her arrival, Vera’s abrasiveness pisses off the local police force and demonstrates the flaws in their earlier investigation. If Jeanie didn’t kill Abigail, Vera must find out who did, and the list of potential suspects only worsens her discomfort with the villagers.  The local potter—one of the original investigators, who suffered a nervous breakdown over the case and left the force, becomes the object of both Vera’s romantic interest and her suspicions. Emma, Abigail’s constant companion and frenemy, comes under scrutiny for finding the body immediately after the murder and for her stalkerish attraction to the potter. Even Emma’s father, Robert, appears too saint-like for a man who fled his former home in York under mysterious circumstances.

My only reservation about the book was there wasn’t much character development of the murderer and there were a lot of unresolved story lines. I was especially disinterested in the story of Michael, the father of Jeanie. The character of Vera jumped off the page and I wanted Cleeves to maintain the story from her perspective.

Fans of British crime fiction will love this book. I did and am eager to read The Crow Trap, the first book in the series.