★ 10/12/2015
The fatal stabbing of 70-year-old Margaret Krukowski on a train car filled with Christmas shoppers propels British author Cleeves’s excellent sixth mystery featuring Northumbrian Det. Insp. Vera Stanhope (after 2012’s The Glass Room). While some members of Vera’s team deal with the difficult task of identifying possible witnesses and suspects aboard the train, she and Sgt. Joe Ashworth, her protégé, begin the task of learning more about the victim, who lived in the seaside village of Mardle. The secretive Margaret resided at the Harbour Guest House, where she was almost part of owner Kate Dewar’s family. Cleeves expertly handles the interplay among Vera—outsized both in stature and personality—her staff, and the villagers. In addition to the series’s compelling regulars, the cast includes such brilliantly realized minor characters as Kate and Jane Cameron, who runs the Haven, a hostel for homeless women. You don’t have to be a fan of the TV show Vera, now filming its fifth season, to enjoy this top-notch police procedural. Agent: Moses Cardona, Inkwell Management. (Dec.)

I do love Vera!” —Val McDermid

“Excellent . . . Intricate plotting makes for a compulsive read.” —The Independent (UK)

“Detective Vera Stanhope is a remarkable creation.” —Bookseller (UK)

“One of the most appealing fictional detectives to emerge since Andy Dalziel got into his stride.” —Martin Edwards, Spintingler Magazine (UK)

“Watch out for Ann Cleeves . . . Snapped up by ITV, her creation, Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, is the new Frost, played by Brenda Blethyn.” —Red magazine (UK)

“Cleeves has hit the big time . . . This is going to be a winner!” —BBC Front Row (UK)

“An absorbingly cunning mystery.” —Daily Mail (UK)

“Ann Cleeves creates a dark enough mood to keep you straining to see what will come to light next.” —People

“Cleeves once again proves herself a master of mystery, with fine writing, a broodingly atmospheric setting, a twist-filled plot, and a shocker of an ending.” —Booklist

“In true Christie fashion, Cleeves once more pulls the wool over our eyes with cunning and conviction.” —Colin Dexter

★ 10/15/2015
The sixth in Cleeves's series (The Glass Room), which is the basis for the hit public television series Vera starring Brenda Blethyn, finds DI Vera Stanhope and Det. Joe Ashworth chasing a murderer shortly before Christmas. Joe's daughter, Jessie, discovers the fatally stabbed Margaret Krukowski on the Metro. By all appearances Margaret was a kind and elegant lady, so who would want to kill her? It's not long before Margaret's friend is also found murdered. As a fresh blanket of snow covers the town, Joe and Vera try to unearth the many dark secrets of Harbour Street's residents. VERDICT Cleeves offers up evocative settings and flawed characters with depth, making her mysteries wonderfully addictive. Her latest is no exception. [See Prepub Alert, 6/8/15.]

2015-09-23
A murder on the Metro presents a fifth case for a police inspector as smart as she is charmless. As Joe Ashworth waits to leave a rapid-transit train crowded with holiday shoppers, he realizes that for one passenger, stabbed to death en route from Newcastle, there'll be no more Christmases. Joe and his boss, Inspector Vera Stanhope, have to take the unhappy news about the victim, 70-year-old Margaret Krukowski, to Kate Dewar, who owns the Harbour Guest House in a dingy waterfront town at the end of the Metro line. Margaret had been living in the house long before Kate left behind her career as a singer to buy it, and the older woman stayed on as an employee and honorary grandmother to Kate's two children. Although Vera's supposed to supervise the case from her office, her love of digging into other people's lives, perhaps because she has no personal life of her own, sends her door to door along with Joe and her other subordinates to ask questions about the proper, private victim, who had something to hide beyond her recent cancer diagnosis. Nor are the people who were the last to see her—a traveling book salesman, a local owner of a charter boat, a biology professor, even Kate's lover—entirely honest with the detectives. When someone stabs a young prostitute Margaret had befriended, Vera finds the proof she needs that the girl's death and Margaret's are linked to the guesthouse, the boatyard, the local pub on Harbour Street, and to events from years ago. Then the chance recollection of one of Kate's old songs warns the team that if they don't act fast, they may have another murder, closer to home, on their hands. Even though you may wish you could prod Cleeves (Dead Water, 2014, etc.) to pick up the leisurely pace, the complexities of the people and plot make the wait worthwhile.