by Ann Cleeves
Part of Vera Stanhope
First published 2012
Vera Stanhope keeps to herself. Her hippy neighbours are an exception. They show up with homebrew and easy conversation, and she lets them. So when one of them goes missing, Vera does what she does: she starts asking questions. The investigation pulls her away from the familiar and into territory she did not expect. What begins as a search for a missing person becomes something more complicated and more dangerous. Vera has to follow the trail wherever it leads, even when it leads somewhere she would rather not go. Ann Cleeves writes Vera as a woman who operates on instinct and stubbornness. She is not warm, not polished, not easy to like. But she is relentless. The Glass Room shows her working a case that is personal in a way most of her work is not. A neighbour is not a stranger. That changes things. The emotional core of the book is that tension between professional distance and the fact that Vera actually cares what happened to this person. She will not admit it. But the reader can see it. Shortlisted for the Specsavers Bestseller Dagger.
Genres: fiction, mystery, crime, contemporary, thriller, detective
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, gritty, introspective, suspenseful
Tropes: missing-person-mystery, professional-distance, reluctant-detective
Period: 21st-century
373 pages · Hardcover · Macmillan
Content warnings: death, violence