Review: The Rising Tide by Ann Cleeves

About the Book:

For fifty years a group of friends have been meeting regularly for reunions on Holy Island, celebrating the school trip where they met, and the friend that they lost to the rising causeway tide five years later. Now, when one of them is found hanged, Vera is called in. Learning that the dead man had recently been fired after misconduct allegations, Vera knows she must discover what the friends are hiding, and whether the events of many years before could have led to murder then, and now . . .

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 . . .

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/books/the-rising-tide-by-ann-cleeves-2022-01-12

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59808344-the-rising-tide

My Thoughts:

The Rising Tide is the tenth book in Ann Cleeves beloved Vera series. I fell in love with the Vera character from the BBC program, and I’ve grown to love Ms. Cleeves writing as a result of following Vera in the pages of her novels.

The setting of Holy Island is as heavy with atmosphere as it is with fog and mist. It’s the perfect location for a mystery. As with any police procedural, the gathering of facts and suspects can become tedious with details. However, those details come in handy when sifting through the misinformation and misrepresentations. Vera attacks this case with her usual confidence and a little carelessness, and that creates a violent threat and grave danger for her and her team.

I love Vera’s tenacity and even her unkempt look. I loved the twists and shocking reveals as the story approaches its zenith. Another Ann Cleeves mystery that kept me guessing to the end.

About the Author: Ann grew up in the country, first in Herefordshire, then in North Devon. Her father was a village school teacher. After dropping out of university she took a number of temporary jobs – child care officer, women’s refuge leader, bird observatory cook, auxiliary coastguard – before going back to college and training to be a probation officer.

While she was cooking in the Bird Observatory on Fair Isle, she met her husband Tim, a visiting ornithologist. She was attracted less by the ornithology than the bottle of malt whisky she saw in his rucksack when she showed him his room. Soon after they married, Tim was appointed as warden of Hilbre, a tiny tidal island nature reserve in the Dee Estuary. They were the only residents, there was no mains electricity or water and access to the mainland was at low tide across the shore. If a person’s not heavily into birds – and Ann isn’t – there’s not much to do on Hilbre and that was when she started writing. Her first series of crime novels features the elderly naturalist, George Palmer-Jones. A couple of these books are seriously dreadful.

In 1987 Tim, Ann and their two daughters moved to Northumberland and the north east provides the inspiration for many of her subsequent titles. The girls have both taken up with Geordie lads. In the autumn of 2006, Ann and Tim finally achieved their ambition of moving back to the North East.