The Rising Tide (Vera Stanhope)

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Rick and Isobel hadn’t noticed her, because they were so focused on each other, spitting out insults. If one of the women who’d shared that first weekend of connection had been free, perhaps that would have worked. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U. But with the tide rising, secrets long-hidden are finding their way to the surface, and Vera and the team may find themselves in more danger than they could have believed possible .

The Rising Tide by Ann Cleeves - Pan Macmillan

The Rising Tide is classic Cleeves: an atmospheric, gripping police procedural in which the environment is as deadly as the desperate murderer . And there had been a connection, so strong and fierce that after fifty years the tie was still there, unbroken and still worth celebrating.

For fifty years a group of friends have been meeting regularly for reunions on Holy Island, celebrating the school trip where they met, and the friend that they lost to the rising causeway tide five years later. Varvello’s boy of the title is never named, but his presence is all-encompassing – although it is only towards the end that we start to see the world through his anguished eyes in this darkly eloquent and moving novel. One of them, Isobel, died that weekend, rushing off after a row and attempting to drive over the causeway while the tide was rushing in (“Her vehicle had been swept from the causeway in the high tide of the equinox, tossed from the road like a toy by the wind and the waves”). Fortunately, Kit’s partner, Lilly, is a brilliant vaccinologist and she starts investigating the origins of this mysterious plague.

The Rising Tide by Ann Cleeves | Waterstones

At first, Sue doesn’t recognise her, but then the memories come flooding back and she finds herself desperate to cling on to this woman who represents a part of her vanished childhood. The Sunday Times Who doesn’t love ‘large and shabby’ Vera Stanhope, the blunt detective in Ann Cleeves’s Northumberland police procedurals? At first, it seems innocuous – just a ticking noise in your ear, which those around you can also hear. He’d stayed where he was, staring out of the window like a nebby old woman, waiting to see what would happen next.Ann also spends her time advocating for reading to improve health and wellbeing and supporting access to books. The engrossing plot delves into the friends' reminiscences, which seem innocuous but possess an underlying menace. Ann Cleeves is on top form in this atmospheric mystery that gradually expands to include more shifty characters on the mainland, and, on her tenth outing, you feel the pain beneath Vera’s blowsy bravado. The weight of that name – the enormous rock around his neck – pulled him to the floor, his back against the bed and his hands pressed to his mouth. The fact that Rick was recently fired from his job over allegations of sexual impropriety does not convince Annie that her notably vain friend would commit suicide and leave himself to be found naked.