The Darkest Evening (Vera Stanhope)

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This is the first book by this author I have tried to read. An editorial note, as a rule I’m not a big fan of the police procedural mysteries set in Great Britain, never have been. But I thought I’d give this one a go.

She is a solid, plainly dressed woman, wearing her trademark hat and heavy coat. It’s easy for people to underestimate her acuity. She seems far too simple to be as perceptive as she is. Attractive Juliet opens the door. Ann Cleeves has just proved again that she is an outstanding author of police procedural mysteries. Ann has previously used short stories as an opportunity to explore Vera's past: The Habit of Silence, one of Ann's contributions to Best Eaten Cold, the second anthology of stories from Ann and her colleagues in the Murder Squad, reveals something more about Vera Stanhope, the woman she is now and the past that made her. The Woman on the Island, now available as a Kindle single, was originally published as Hector's Other Woman in Guilty Consciences, the new anthology from the prestigious Crime Writers' Association, and is now reissued in Ann's short story collection, Offshore. As a huge fan of both the Shetland and Vera series of books, I had high expectations for Cleeves’ latest. . . . A stunning debut for Cleeves’ latest crimefighter."―David Baldacci on The Long Call The suspense in this complex, extremely well-written mystery is as mesmerizing as the landscape.”— Free-Lance Star

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There’s a woman out there. A dead woman. I doubt what you have to say is more important than that. The police need to know.’ Well, there’s this.’ Vera looked down and Juliet saw a sleeping child in a car seat. ‘Do you think I could bring it in? It’s freezing out here. It’s asleep at the moment.’ She looked at Juliet as if her opinion mattered.

That branch of the clan used politeness as a method of mass destruction. But Hector had always come away humiliated and angry. Vera, who’d never felt any obligation to be loyal to her father, had understood the family’s point of view. Hector would be rude and demanding, usually halfway drunk on the most recent visits. She’d been hugely embarrassed and they’d been kind to her. I read that before I read the book, so perhaps I was predisposed to like it because I’m such a fan of Louise Penny’s Armand Gamache series. Who doesn't love 'large and shabby' Vera Stanhope, the blunt detective in Ann Cleeves's Northumberland police procedurals? She is already one of the genre immortals."This investigation brings out the dirty secrets of the family and verifying the small town gossips: Lorna and Juliet might be step sisters or Lorna may have an affair with Juliet’s husband who may be also the secret father of the baby. When the doorbell went, she excused herself from her guests and made her way into the hall. Dorothy would be up to her ears preparing dinner and her mother Harriet, deep in conversation with Jane, the priest from the village, still seemed to believe that they had staff to respond. Harriet had blossomed after her husband’s death, taken to the solo role of lady of the manor with aplomb and seemed hardly to miss Crispin at all. Away from the fire, the hall felt chill. Juliet thought again about the bedrooms and made a mental note to remind Dorothy about hot-water bottles. Juliet hoped that their city friends might see them, and the electric blankets she’d put on some of the beds, as charming, a part of the country-house experience. Dorothy was brilliant and almost certain to remember, but it was the small details that counted. This was about business more than friendship. The Stanhope family is not sure how Vera should be treated, but as a member of the police she takes charge and soon is treating them the way she would treat most any suspects of a murder. The contrast between Vera, who has little concern for the opinions of others and Harriet, the matriarch of the Stanhope family who lives and dies by her reputation is well drawn. The various characters are all well developed and the reader has ample opportunity to deepen their knowledge of them as they move through the book. The second verse in Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is the source of the title. “‘The darkest evening of the year’ would be the night before the Winter Solstice (December 21), which is the longest night of the calendar year.”

To date I have probably seen more episodes of Vera than I have read the books. I think I should remedy that as there is so much that can’t possibly make it into a script. The mystery was interesting and there were plenty of red herrings to throw the reader off. I enjoyed the story and will read more books in this series. I'm always interested to learn where the title of a book comes from and here the source seems to be a phrase in the Robert Frost poem, 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening', one of my personal favorites, and which has significance to the victim in the story. The darkest evening of the year of course is the winter solstice, in the bleak midwinter. This is my second book by Ann Cleeves, having read The Long Call, the first in her Two Rivers series, last September. But this is my first read in her long-running Vera Stanhope series and I'm happy to say it wasn't difficult at all to jump into the series with book #9.Juliet felt a tug in the gut. She’d wanted children ever since she could remember, but it hadn’t happened and she was approaching an age when perhaps it never would. Sometimes she couldn’t help an overwhelming feeling of jealousy when children were mentioned. If it’s not mine, I don’t care if it freezes to death. Sometimes a gentler longing, which was just as desperate. ‘Of course, bring him in. Or her. Which is it?’ When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery. She knew, though, that any sense of celebration would have to wait. Still with the boy on her knee, she pulled on his snow suit and his little red wellies, then set him on the floor while she found her own outdoor clothes. She took a set of keys from a hook on the kitchen shelf, looked around the room, distracted for a moment by thoughts of decoration, the presents she still had to buy for her son, then she stepped out into the cold. But with the tide rising, secrets long-hidden are finding their way to the surface, and Vera and the team may find themselves in more danger than they could have believed possible . . .