Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Telling Tales - Ann Cleeves


Ann Cleeves has written five different crime fiction series since publishing her first George Palmer Jones novel in 1986, usually alternating novels between whichever are the two most current of her series. These days that means that Cleeves is alternating between additions to her nine-book Vera Stanhope series and additions to her latest series featuring Detective Matthew Venn - which is now two books long. Telling Tales (2005), the second Vera Stanhope novel, re-established that pattern for Cleeves. The novel was published a full six years after the first Vera Stanhope novel because the author published her only two standalone novels in between the first and second Stanhope books. The following year (2006), Cleeves introduced her Shetland series featuring Detective Jimmy Perez, and the Stanhope and Perez books together carried her to a whole new level of popularity she has enjoyed ever since. 


Telling Tales sees Vera and her young partner, Joe Ashworth, reinvestigating a ten-year-old murder conviction that has fallen apart. It turns out that the woman serving prison time for the murder is every bit as innocent as she has been proclaiming herself to be for the last ten years. A witness has finally come forward to prove that Jeanie Long was in London when the fifteen-year-old victim was strangled hours away in her rural village. Unfortunately for Jeanie Long, the news did not reach her in time to save her life. Now, much to the chagrin of the local police, Vera and Joe have been called in as unbiased outside investigators to figure out where and how everything about the initial investigation could have gone so wrong. 


And, even more importantly, to find the real killer who has escaped justice for the last decade.


Neither objective is going to be easy to achieve, however, because Vera soon learns that this is a village full of people hiding secrets about the past from each other — and now, from her. All Vera knows for sure is that none of them can be trusted or taken at face value, including the two cops who worked the murder case ten years earlier. Soon enough, Vera is not sure which she dislikes more, the village’s boringly flat landscape or the people who lie there. 


Bottom Line: Readers have come to expect complicated and satisfying mysteries from Ann Cleeves, and Telling Tales is no exception. I do suggest that, right from the beginning of the novel, readers begin making a list of character names and descriptions as each new character is introduced. There are many of them, and their relationships get more and more complicated as the story unfolds. I found myself referencing my own character notes almost to the end of the book, and without them, I think I would have missed out on some of Cleeves’s subtle hints and tricks — the very ones that make mysteries like Telling Tales so much fun.


Ann Cleeves


8 comments:

  1. Hey Sam, I appreciate the overview in your post as Cleeves has so many series which is helpful to newbies like me. I've only read (3) of her books so far. Keeping notes is something I frequently do especially in any book with multiple characters. Glad you enjoyed this one.

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    1. I've become a big fan of Cleeves now, and I'm thrilled that she has such a large back catalog for me to explore. Sometimes there's a benefit in being late to the party the way I was so long in discovering Cleeves for myself. I do think I'm going to have to make a regular habit of taking notes when I read her books because there is just so much going on with so many characters and in so many different locations.

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  2. I read this one back in 2019 (https://www.thenatureofthings.blog/2019/08/telling-tales-by-ann-cleeves-review.html) and it confirmed me as an avid Ann Cleeves fan.

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    1. Me, too, Dorothy. I was already pretty much hooked by Cleeves, but after reading this one, there is no doubt about it. I watched the television adaption after reading the novel...no comparison. The book wins, hands-down.

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  3. I like the sound of this one, though I'm not good at taking notes while I read, so I'll probably get lost in all the characters and complications, but that's okay. And I was wondering, now that you've sampled so many of Cleeves' books, if there's one of her series that you like best.

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    1. Right now, I like the Vera Stanhope books best, but I still haven't read a Shetland series book (Jimmy Perez) book yet. I've seen a couple of the Shetland TV seasons and know what to expect...sort of...from the books. I want to read the first one in that series early in 2022. I'm willing to bet that the books are even better than the TV adaptations.

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  4. She's got this series about birdwatchers that I would like to try but are quite difficult to find now or were rather expensive the last time I looked, which was ages ago. Must check again.

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    1. Cath, I had assumed that he Inspector Ramsey and her George Palmer Jones series were both detective series similar to her later books. Is the one about the birdwatchers one of those? I've read that her early books are long out of print now and both difficult to find and very expensive. I'm not even sure if they are available as e-books, honestly.

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