North Devon is enjoying a rare hot summer with tourists flocking to its coastline. Detective Matthew Venn is called out to a rural crime scene at the home of a group of artists. What he finds is an elaborately staged murder - Dr Nigel Yeo has been fatally stabbed with a shard of one of his glassblower daughter's broken vases.
Dr Yeo seems an unlikely murder victim. He's a good man, a public servant, beloved by his daughter. Matthew is unnerved though to find that she is a close friend of Jonathan, his husband.
The Long Call and The Heron's Cry are part of Ann Cleeves' Two Rivers series and have been recently commissioned for ITV.Then another body is found - killed in a similar way. Matthew finds himself treading carefully through the lies that fester at the heart of his community and a case that is dangerously close to home...
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(@panmacmillan, 2 September 2021, ebook, 401 pages, bought from @AmazonKindle)
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I'm a huge fan of the author through the TV series Vera and have seen some of Shetland and I've enjoyed a lot of her books as well. I really enjoyed the first book in the series, The Long Call and have been looking forward to Matthew's next case. Like her other books, much of the focus is on the detectives and how they solve the case and the community they live in and the people involved in the investigation. Matthew and his team find themselves treading on the toes of the close-knit artist community. Matthew clashes with Jonathan when he invites Yeo's daughter to stay with them despite her being a person of interest. Jen wonders if her close friendship with Cynthia can survive when the investigation leads them to question what exactly her husband does holed up in front of a computer all day. Then there's the fact Yeo was looking into the possibility that the local hospital failed to support a young man who killed himself. There are many suspects. I found this a riveting read.
