The Heron's Cry - Ann Cleeves

 

The Detective Matthew Venn novels, of which The Heron's Cry is the second book in the series, follows four previous mystery series of varying degrees of popularity created by British author Ann Cleeves. Readers are most likely to be familiar with the Shetland series featuring DI Jimmy Pérez and the DCI Vera Stanhope series that followed it because each of these served as the basis of a long-running television series. Cleeves's earlier work includes eight novels featuring elderly bird watcher George Palmer-Jones and another six that feature Inspector Ramsay. (New editions of the six Inspector Ramsay books are said to be planned for publication beginning in June 2024.)

The Heron's Cry begins with the murder of a hospital inspector who is looking into the suicide of a teenager who may have been prematurely released by the psychiatric hospital to which he had been admitted for treatment. That investigator, Dr. Nigel Yeo, has apparently been stabbed to death by a sharp piece of glass taken from the remains of a vase created by his own glassblower daughter. But Matthew Venn's investigation of the murder will barely be underway before another victim is killed in the same manner. Frustrated as Venn is at times by the close relationship between his husband and the first victim's daughter, he knows that he and his team are going to have to eliminate the list of prospective killers one by one. 

The mystery at the heart of The Heron's Cry is a solid one enhanced by Cleeves's manner of presenting it. An Ann Cleeves novel can always be counted on to include an atmospheric setting and memorable side-characters; in this case, those are Venn's second-in-command DS Jen Rafferty and the often oversensitive DC Ross May. Her mysteries are always complex, so there are more than enough potential murderers in this one to keepVenn, Rafferty, May, and readers busy for quite a while eliminating one red herring after another. 

Matthew Venn is proving to be a little more difficult for me to warm up to then some of Cleeves's other centerpiece characters. Part of that, I think, is because Venn is such a cold fish of a character, a man who struggles to display his emotions or to really understand the different personalities that surround him on a given day. I am sympathetic to Venn and the terrible upbringing he endured that shaped him into the adult he became, but he never seems to try very seriously to change himself for the good even after he recognizes his flaws. That said, I'm an Ann Cleeves fan, and I am curious to see what she has in mind for Matthew Venn, so I'll probably be reading the third installment of Venn's story soon.