The Rising Tide (Vera Stanhope)

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Their former teacher, Judy Marshall, still lives on the island quite differently from her new age mindset. A fabulous setting for a murder mystery, with its sudden fogs, and the dangers stemming from its rising tides. Asked about the future of Vera, she said: “Every time we finish a series I say I’m not going to be doing any more. This is a brilliant crime series, and if you have never read it, I strongly urge you to give it a try.

Vera is a star of a protagonist, overweight, with a shambolic appearance that has her giving off the vibes of a bag lady, and here she is mistaken as a cleaner, not that it bothers her in the slightest. Even if Philip had been closer, he might not have made out what was being said, because there was a storm blowing and the wind would have carried the words away. She has twice been short listed for a CWA Dagger Award - once for her short story The Plater, and the following year for the Dagger in the Library award. 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 . Holly is worried she is going to be like Vera, alone and single and nothing to show for it but her job.This story has so many threads going on, but it is a terrific story, with both a cold case and a new one, that I was totally engrossed in.

The pupils - Philip Robson, Annie Laidler, Daniel Rede, Rick Kelsall, Isobel Hall, Kenneth Hampton and Charlotte Thomas - bonded with one another and agreed to have a reunion on Holy Island every five years. For those who both read the books and watch the television series, it must be said that it’s a pleasure to still have Joe Ashworth as Vera’s second in the books—“her surrogate son, and her conscience.

An image of Isobel, so young, so bonny, so reckless in her desires and her thoughtlessness, intruded into his meditation and he allowed his mind to wander. The engrossing plot delves into the friends' reminiscences, which seem innocuous but possess an underlying menace. His working life moved to the beat of funeral services, the tolling of the church bell, the march of pall-bearers. She went on to say that she misses her dog Jack, who can’t be with her in the North East for all of that time.

From Ann Cleeves - New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows - comes the stunning tenth Vera Stanhope novel, The Rising Tide, a powerful novel about guilt, betrayal, and the longheld secrets people keep. Cleeves turns the location of Holy Island, that simply drips with atmosphere, into a wonderful central background character, popular with tourists, with its menacing mists and fogs, and the dangers of the rising tide. Ann Cleeves is well known for her popular Shetland Island mystery series, featuring Detective Jimmy Perez and her Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope mystery series, set in northern England.

A friend of mine once joked that the work of Ann Cleeves is the closest the crime-fiction genre comes to evoking ASMR — the euphoric, pleasant, spine-tingling sensation that’s all the rage on YouTube. There’s a swathe of clues to go through, and false starts, overlayed by the sense of time and Hector’s bits of nonsense bullying Vera from the grave. Cleeves’ books are strongly character driven, and Holly Island becomes another character in this story.