by Ann Cleeves
First published 2006
Ten years ago, Jeanie Long was convicted of killing fifteen-year-old Abigail Mantel. The village of Elvet, on the East Yorkshire peninsula, buried the case and moved on. Then new evidence surfaces proving Jeanie never did it. Abigail's actual killer has been walking free the whole time. Emma Bennett grew up alongside Abigail. She was the one who found her body in a ditch on a cold winter morning, and she has spent a decade trying not to think about it. The news tears that open again. Inspector Vera Stanhope arrives to work the case from scratch. She goes door to door, pulling residents back to a chapter of their lives they would rather leave closed. Some are afraid of the killer. Others seem more afraid of what Vera might find out about them. The village holds more than one secret, and as Vera presses harder, the people around her grow tense in ways that do not quite fit simple grief or simple guilt. Vera starts to see that the truth about Abigail's death is tangled up with choices people made long ago and have never confessed to anyone.
Genres: mystery, crime, adult-fiction, british-literature, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, gritty, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: hidden-secrets, investigation-reopened, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Elvet, East Yorkshire
400 pages · Paperback · Pan
Content warnings: death, murder