The Darkest Evening: A Vera Stanhope Novel
Getting ready for Summer Holiday reading, I always go for a good mystery and Ann Cleeves never disappoints. The Darkest Evening is the latest instalment in the Vera Stanhope series. You can catch up with Vera on ABC iView as the series has been made into a TV series that does remain true to the books if you have not read any of these before but this novel can stand alone.
We find out more about Vera’s family and her own backstory in this latest mystery. It opens with a blizzard and Vera being her normal stubborn self decides to drive home in it. She takes a wrong turn and finds an abandoned car and an abandoned baby and realises that she is near her father’s ancestral home, Brockburn, and decides to head there with the baby thinking the mother has also headed there for help. What she finds is a glamorous dinner party, meets her cousin after years of estrangement, and a dead woman outside in the snow.
"This mystery is ultimately about families, about resilience and recovery, about the need to control and, of course, about using violence to silence."
- Jane Cowell
This mystery is ultimately about families, about resilience and recovery, about the need to control and, of course, about using violence to silence. We are drawn into the Brockburn world, the rundown estate, the tenant farmers who live there and the family that have always excluded Vera and her father in this mystery. Vera has made many life choices and we learn more about the ‘why’ of these choices in this novel and come away with more respect for Vera and her methods of detection.
We also learn more about her team. Holly, desperate for Vera’s approval and annoyed at herself for needing it and of course, Joe, Vera’s support, who is determined that she start to look after herself more. But Vera, heads straight into danger and doesn’t stop until the baby is in a safe place, the murder is solved and everyone’s secrets are brought out to the light. This instalment shows Cleeves at the top of her writing game as the murder mystery and the families that circle the murdered woman’s life are absorbing and you can fall into the story and find yourself in Northumberland, in the cold, walking beside Vera as she resolutely finds a killer. Totally recommend that this goes on your Summer Holiday reading list.