by Ann Cleeves
Part of Vera Stanhope
First published 2017
Vera Stanhope walks into a prison expecting an unpleasant conversation and gets one. John Brace, a former detective superintendent she helped put away for corruption and a gamekeeper's death, offers her a deal. Find out what happened to Robbie Marshall, a slippery operator who vanished in the mid-nineties, and Brace will say nothing to hurt his daughter and grandchildren. He tells Vera that Marshall is dead and buried near St Mary's Island in Whitley Bay. When officers dig, they find two skeletons, not one. The cold case pulls Vera backward in time, and the ground gets personal fast. Brace, Marshall, and a shadowy figure called the Prof were all regulars at The Seagull, a nightclub her father Hector frequented. The four of them ran together, and Hector was among the last people to see Marshall alive. Vera has spent her career outrunning her father's shadow. Now she has to walk straight into it, sorting through old loyalties, buried crimes, and the uncomfortable question of how much she never wanted to know.
Genres: mystery, crime, adult-fiction, british-literature, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, gritty, introspective, suspenseful
Tropes: cold-case-investigation, generational-conflict, personal-stakes, unreliable-past
Setting: St Mary's Island, Whitley Bay, The Seagull
Period: 1990s, mid-nineties
400 pages · Hardcover · Pan Macmillan
Content warnings: death, murder