by Ann Cleeves
First published 2016
Vera Stanhope walks into the sauna at her local gym and finds a woman dead on the bench. Her first thought is natural causes. Then she sees the marks around the victim's throat, and that hope disappears fast. This is the fourth case for the blunt, rumpled DI from Northumberland, and she throws herself into it with the kind of energy she rarely brings to anything else. Working alongside Sergeant Joe Ashworth, she digs into the dead woman's past and pulls up something ugly involving a young child. Joe is stretched thin between the investigation and his family at home. Vera has no such competing loyalties. For her, a murder inquiry is where she feels most herself. The case turns on a community that guards its secrets carefully and a killer whose grip on old events has never loosened. The closer Vera gets to the truth, the clearer it becomes that someone is willing to kill again rather than let the past surface. Vera is not the kind of detective who lets go either.
Genres: mystery, crime, adult, adult-fiction, thriller, detective
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, gritty, intense, suspenseful
Tropes: determined-detective, obsessive-investigation, partner-dynamic, secrets-revealed
Setting: Northumberland
372 pages · Paperback · Pan Books
Content warnings: child-abuse, death, murder